


Best Served Cold

by Luana Araceli (Luana_Araceli)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dragons, Fantasy, Gen, Hidden Species, Urban Fantasy, War, alternate history timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 19:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 53,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11835507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luana_Araceli/pseuds/Luana%20Araceli





	1. Chapter One

The tension meeting new families is always the worst. I never know what to say or what they expect of me, considering my past. I’ve been through so many foster families it’s a wonder I’m still in the system, rather than locked up in some sort of juvenile detention center. Then again, I’m smart enough not to do anything to put me on that particular radar.

The Phlanx’s picked me up from the bus depot about an hour ago; from what I understand it’s a four hour drive to their house. It’s a shame that there isn’t a closer bus station to them, really, because then this tension wouldn't feel so insurmountable. But there is no such thing as an insurmountable obstacle--a lesson I have learned time and time again.

Jeffrey and Monica seem like nice enough people, but I’ve also learned that humans have a tendency to be deceiving. They are still a primitive species, but I will never forget that they are the reason I must be in this body, in this shape, forced to assume the guise of one of their kind. All because a few thousand years ago, humans got greedy. They didn't see a reason for our existence anymore and once they figured out how to eliminate us, they wasted no effort in doing everything they could to eliminate us.

So many thousands of years have passed since then that most humans don’t even believe we existed, despite the fact the history books all cover the Draconic Wars in-depth. Almost all of what they are taught about the wars is false. The humans accused the dragons of being the instigators of the war, but I was there at its start and I will be around to end this oppression.

Jeffrey is a balding middle-aged man who seems perpetually stressed out. From what I understand, he is the general manager of the local theater in Winston Heights, the place I’m shortly going to be calling home. Let’s hope this one lasts a bit longer than the last ones I’ve had the misfortune of being placed in. A year and eight families. I’ve made quite a few friends at the government centers I’ve been at while waiting for the next family to claim me. I’m sure some of them expect me to be back within the month--that’s about how long my last placements have lasted with a couple months in between placements at government facilities.

I’m certainly hoping that this time it will be different. There is no more time left to me. The Great Forgetting has finally occurred and it is up to me as the War Leader of my Clan to put our plan into action. Delaying now is not an option--not after we’ve invested thousands of years honing it to perfection. And that is a luxury humans will never have.

I look towards the windshield, gluing my eyes to the road in front of me as I examine my new parents with my peripheral vision. Without conscious thought, I shift my form so that I see more out of the corners of my eyes than out of my frontal vision--something that I do naturally in my dragon form. If either of them were to look at me right now, they would notice nothing abnormal despite my shifting--I always cast illusion magic before I shift, as a fail-safe. It’s not something I have always done, but after one too many mishaps I learned it was better to be safe than have to resort to murder. Not that murder bothers me, being a War Leader and all, but it is rather inconvenient at the best of times and tends to mess up well-laid plans.

Jeffrey is focused entirely on his driving, his focus so intense that I can’t help but be impressed. If he puts that much focus into running his business, it is no doubt one of the most prosperous ones in Winston Heights. There is no music to listen to, no talk shows. The radio is silent and I am starting to see that the reason for that is this intense concentration Jeffrey Phlanx has developed. Monica, his wife, doesn't even reach for the radio, and she doesn't speak. Her head is tilted down, and from this angle, I can see that she is reading a book. If I allow myself to focus my sight, I could read it with her, but I have no interest in the seedy romance title she has picked out. Humans are much too obsessed with reproduction; it is astonishing how quickly they have populated the planet since the Wars in which they sought to exterminate us. Of course, I can’t say much on that matter, because dragons reproduce just as quickly. As a War Leader, I have put aside all thoughts of reproduction because that is not how I serve my clan. And I have no drive to have children; not after I watched friends lose children to the first War.

Though the Wars occurred nearly twelve thousand human years ago, the memory of losing my friends still haunts me. I shake my head. It is not an appropriate time to indulge in grief.

It is amazing how slowly time can seem to pass in a car when no one speaks. It is boring, to say the least, but more than that... I am a dragon confined to a human body stuck in a vehicle going no more than 70 miles per hour on the interstate. Were I to shift and spread my wings, I could skyrocket to 1,120 miles per hour in less than half a second. It is another reason I am glad that the Great Forgetting has finally occurred. To have to go so exceptionally slow is painful and I have not enjoyed the full use of my wings in nearly 12,000 years. I don’t think a human could truly understand that, because there is no adequate comparison.

I shift my eyes back into their normal form, as watching two humans in a car gets rather boring after about two minutes. They don’t do anything that other humans haven’t done in front of me a million times in my past. Jeffrey’s concentration is impressive, but I have seen other humans like him. And Monica’s obsession with seedy romance novels is so typical of human females that the only response I can give it is a roll of my eyes.

I sigh silently and settle back into the comfort of my seat. One hour and a half down; almost three left to go. I trance myself because it’s the only way I’m going to get through this trip without going completely insane with boredom. I don’t mind that the radio isn’t going, because human music is just noise to me. I do wish that I could roll my window down so I could hear the sound of the wind whistling by, but Jeffrey told me when I got in the car that under no circumstances was I to roll down the window because it wasted gas. The frugality of this couple astonishes me, because it’s very obvious that they aren't poor. He owns a movie theater, so the very idea of him being at all poor is completely ludicrous. And Monica is a schoolteacher. I mean, I know that by human standards teachers don’t make a ton of money, but I also know that by those same standards they aren't exactly poor either. I shrug. Human money really holds no interest for me.

There are other members of my clan responsible for the financial backing of the plan I have begun to set in motion. We chose Winston Heights as the center of our operation about four thousand years ago, when it was little more than a valley between two mountains and humans had yet to set foot in it. It was one of the last unoccupied places that dragons could still meet in our true form without having to worry about being seen by humans. Of course, we posted scouts along the ridges to make sure, but there was never truly any danger.

But that was where we decided to make our stand when the Great Forgetting occurred. As the last place to be colonized by humans--we knew it wouldn't be long, as we had watched them progressively cover the globe for some time--it would be the perfect place for us to remind them that we were still very much among them. Getting to a foster family in this area hadn't been easy--the shape I assumed was of a seventeen year old girl. The background story I had created for myself was simple and eloquent. My parents had died from a drug overdose when  I was three, and I’d been through so many foster families it was almost unreal. Despite that, I didn't have a reputation as a troublemaker--just a girl with an unusually long streak of bad luck. What the government workers who placed me in every foster family never realized was that I was manipulating them into taking me where I was going. And of course, to make my story feasible, I’d started out using a transformation that turned me into a three year old human female and used a couple of my loyal dragons to act as my dead parents. It’s remarkably simple to fool humans who have completely forgotten that magic exists. They are amazed by their technological prowess and completely forget that magic is so much more powerful than all their gadgetry.

I close my eyes and enhance my hearing, forcing my way past the solid bulk of car between me and the outside world, sighing in silent relief as the sound of wind fills my senses, gently masking the wonderful sounds of nature I can hear straining behind it. Enhancing my senses is a rudimentary magic, but it has served me well. Magic is so normal to me that if I were to try to explain it to anyone, I would be at a complete loss for words. There are others in the clan responsible for teaching magic--I’m a War Leader. But I don’t teach War. I live it. Every thing I do is about war; it’s in the very core of my being.

Humans think war is all about violence and death and murder, but that’s not how I view it. War is about winning with the least amount of bloodshed possible, knowing that all life is sacred and treating it that way. But it’s also about being able to acknowledge that murder and violence are sometimes essential for war and being able to set aside that sacredness for life in order to do what’s necessary for the survival of the Clan.

I hear the crunch of gravel and pull my senses back to normal human ranges. If I’m hearing that sound, we must be close to our destination. It’s very rare for there to be gravel on an interstate and I didn't hear any road construction going on during the drive. I shrug off the haze that I’ve allowed myself for the past few hours and start taking note of everything around me. As a strategist, there’s no telling what information I’m going to gather here that will serve me well at a future date.

The car rolls to a stop and I unbuckle my seat belt. It is an unnecessary precaution for me, of course, but it is one I make pains to be seen undertaking. I can not afford for my humanity to come into question for any reason, so I do my best to seem as cautious as I can without attracting attention for being too cautious. I have learned after being amongst humans for so long that there is a delicate balance that has to be struck between every extreme. To be so in-the-middle on everything, except for those few humans who are named geniuses because they excel in only one area, is still something that strikes me as very odd even after all these years.

It is different with dragons. Each member of the clan has one specific area in which their magic is the most impressive and they are taught to turn all of their magic towards the pursuit of it. For me, of course, it was and will always be war. Even now, disguised as I am, with every breathe I take the only thing on my mind is war. Every person I come into contact with I am constantly analyzing to see if they will suit my purposes or if I can use their skills to my advantage in one way or another. Amongst humans, this type of coldly analytical thinking is discouraged and abhorred, so of course I do not display it openly. For a War Leader, however, this is the most indispensable tool we have. Dragons are not ruled by their emotions the way humans are. The only thing that drives us is logic alongside the drive to survive.

Of course, saying that we are not ruled by our emotions does not mean we do not experience them. We do, and to extremes that humans have yet to embrace. But we are not consumed by them and when necessary, we set them aside. It is the reason that the humans could not destroy us during the Wars. If we had turned on them the way they turned on us, I sincerely doubt that any of them would have had the ability to stay calm and rational and think of a plan to hide amongst us with the magic they possessed.

Because magic is not limited to dragons, and never has been. Humans used to possess such magic that we were in awe of the sheer amount of power their small forms could contain. But they misused it when they went to war against us and it slowly began to trickle out of them over the centuries. And now the few humans with any magic are so few and far between that no one takes their claims of power seriously. Instead of magic, humans developed scientifically and designed thinks like cars, airplanes, and cell phones.

The only problem with that is that the only way to kill a dragon is with magic. There is no technology in this world that could even scratch the surface of our skin. Nuclear weapons we would simply absorb--in fact, there are quite a few dragons whose sole purpose is to prevent nuclear devastation from occurring. Though the humans never understand what has happened, the few who have tried to launch nuclear weapons at other countries have found the launch to fail every time, either through a glitch in the system or a projectile ending up as a dud. I made a decision when the first human discovered how to split atoms that we would allow no nuclear warfare on the surface of our planet. Because while humans may want to wipe one another out for one political reason or another, the other living things do not deserve to suffer along with them.

War is not about who is right and who is wrong, though there are those who would disagree. War is about choosing the best path for everyone involved and causing the least amount of destruction possible as you strive towards that goal. Every life is sacred and dragons understand that the way it’s meant. Humans look at it and think it applies only to humanity. But we know better. Every ecosystem on this planet interacts with every other ecosystem and to destroy even one of them would rock the world completely out of balance. Truthfully, we have not been able to stop the destruction humans have caused entirely, so the world as it is now is tormented by a multitude of ecosystems that have been thrown out of balance and it does the best it can to restore that balance. I see it everyday and listen to humans go on about the end of days and how the inclement weather around the globe is a sign that the world is going to end. And I have to hold my tongue, because what they don’t see is the simple truth that nature is attempting to restore the balance they have destroyed with all their technology.

I pull myself out of my thoughts--I could go so deeply into the ways humanity has harmed rather than helped this planet that I could write a book on the subject alone. But to complain so rampantly about something I plan on doing something about in the near future seems like a waste of time. And time is something that we’re starting to run short on because our population is sky-rocketing. There were more draglets born this cycle than in the last one hundred cycles. And there is not enough magic in the world for all of us to maintain human guise for much longer. It isn’t that magic is running out--it’s simply that there’s a limited supply. And our population is starting to reach that limit. Once we are all able to assume our true forms, the magic will simply return to its source. It is like emptying a well by taking all the water from it and dividing it equally into cups. Eventually, you run out of water to put in the cups. And when we return to our original forms, it will be like taking the water we have split into cups and putting it back into the well.

Anyway, enough of that. I still have to meet the rest of the Phlanx family. There are three more humans that I must assess before this day is over and that means that I must maintain my focus. I cannot afford to dwell on the difficulties I face.

Jeffrey turns the key in the ignition, shutting off the engine and shifts in his seat to look at me. I freeze with my hand on the door handle, hoping that I am not doing something wrong by this human’s standards. I am never entirely certain what they are thinking, since their thought patterns are so very different from my own.

“Before we go in,” he says, “I want you to know that we are aware of everything that you have done in the past.”  He takes a breath and closes his eyes, perhaps composing himself or steeling himself--I’m not really sure which. “And we decided when we looked over your file that we would give you a blank slate when you got here.”

“We understand,” Monica said, her voice soft, “that you have had difficulties with other families in the past and that most of those problems were in no way your fault.”

“But we also know,” Jeffrey continued, “that a couple incidents that occurred were your doing. Despite that, we are still willing to take you into our house. Provided that.” He pauses significantly, his hazel eyes widening a bit as he attempts a stern look.

I try not to laugh; humans in general adopting intimidating looks just strike me as absurd, but him doing it is beyond that. He is not the kind of man used to having to use such a look and it shows. It also tells me that he is as kind as he seems and that I will find none of the trouble here I have stumbled into before. “Yes?” I say, because it seems that he is waiting for some sort of response from me before he continues.

“Provided that you pull your weight around the house by doing a few household chores and helping out with Lea whenever we need a babysitter.”

“I can do that,” I say quietly, dropping my eyes in what I have learned is a show of acquiescence. I keep my voice low and soft, gentled to a point that no human in their right mind would think me a threat. In fact, the form I have taken on to pass as human looks frail in comparison to most of the people around me. Which makes it perfect, since the last place anyone thinks to look for a culprit is among the weak, the sick, or the elderly. I love that humans are predictable in this way; it makes my job a million times easier.

“Good,” Monica says. “And tomorrow Terra will take you shopping for your school clothes. The... _things_... you have now are not suitable for a girl living in my house.”

I swallow back the laugh that threatens to escape and assume a serious expression. It won’t do to upset my new foster mother before the first day has even passed. Plus, the clothes I have on aren't really suitable for anyone to wear--they’re hand-me-downs three sizes too small for the form I wear. The once purple t-shirt has become a half-shirt, exposing my mid-riff. The black sweat pants that used to stretch to my ankles just barely extend past my knees and they’re so tight that my skin can’t breathe beneath them. The flip flops I have on, luckily, _are_ my size and they sit comfortably on my feet. Instead of laughing, I blush and duck my head. “I...Are you sure? I wouldn't want you to go out of your way...”

Monica snorts. “Nonsense. You’re as good as family now and family does not let family walk around in clothes so immodest.” She eyes the clothes again disdainfully, her lips pursing into a frown.

“I.. I don’t know what to say.” I lower the pitch of my voice, assuming the role of the shy child who is used to having things taken away. Mind games like these are so simple I could do them half-asleep. I miss the dragons I grew up with whose wit kept me on my toes. People are so dull, so easy to fool. But knowing that there’s always the possibility that a human might one day surprise me, I never give any act less than my entire concentration. To fall prey to the trap of overconfidence is not a mistake my clan forgives. It is an immediate death sentence. And considering my position in the clan, it would spell disaster for all of us.

“No words are necessary,” Monica says, her voice as soft as my own. The concern and sympathy in her tone gives me a small amount of satisfaction. With any luck, I will have her completely ensnared by the end of the week. Evoking sympathy from others is an incredibly easy game to play, but I have learned that men and women respond best if you use two different approaches. Women tend to fall the most for the role of an innocent child who has been subjected to a cruel world through no fault of their own whereas men fall the hardest for those women who look up to them to protect them because it makes them feel empowered and strong

“I. Thank you,” I say softly.

Jeffrey hasn't’t taken his eyes off of me since the conversation began and I am doing the best I can to do what I think he expects me to do under such intense scrutiny. It is not always easy to make such a judgment call, because all I can do is guess even under the most favorable conditions. Wearing human skin does not give me the ability to think the way they do. All I can really do is consider every other situation I’ve been in that was remotely similar and pick what seems like the best reaction to give based on past experiences.

“Well,” he says finally, and I breathe a silent sigh of relief. It seems that my choice this time was a good one. “Let’s go meet the rest of the family, shall we?”

I give him a small smile, still playing the part of the shy girl who is nearly terrified of her own shadow, and push the car door open. The scent of the gravel and the grass hits me in a rush and I close my eyes, allowing myself a moment of pleasure at the smell. I close the door, not quite getting it shut and give Jeffrey an apologetic smile as he comes around to my side and opens it so that he can close it properly. I time it well enough that the slight annoyance I sensed in him fades almost immediately--after all, I am giving him what he craves the most--the feeling of being needed for his superior strength.

The house in front of me is two stories and bricked. I like brick houses. They are stable and tend to be very well-built. Plus they stay warm all year round. In the summer, I love to find the warmest place in the house and just curl up and take naps, though I do my best not to attract attention. After all, it’s not exactly normal human behavior to seek out heat sources when it’s already hot outside.

There is no garage, so the car is sitting in a gravel spot intended to be used for just that purpose, right underneath a giant oak tree. Grass surrounds the house on every side and I feel a surge of happiness. The yard is well cared for and the two flower gardens I can see from here have been very well cared for. It makes me feel slightly warmer towards these humans; those who treat nature with the respect she deserves are bearable company for me. I have watched other humans, in the other foster families I’ve been placed in, take pride in destroying animals’ homes and squashing out the life of beautiful flowers for no other reason than the sheer joy of destruction. These are the humans I have no desire to be around.

I take a step towards the grass above the gravel and see that there are hidden stepping stones. I smile and step gently on the first one, taking care to avoid trampling the grass as I walk to the front door of the house. The cement porch is narrow, barely wide enough to allow the door to be opened without passing off its edge. There is a wooden rocking chair to the right of the door, which opens to the left, and I wonder idly who it belongs to. Jeffrey doesn't’t seem like the type of man to care much about the outdoors and Monica strikes me as a woman more interested in fashion than nature. That leaves only the two older children I have yet to met. Terra and Jason. If I were to guess, I would guess Terra because I have seen very few human males interested in gardening. And the polish on the chair makes me think that it belongs to whoever planted the gardens.

I hesitate before the door, unsure if I should wait for my foster parents to go in before me or take the initiative here and just go inside. This is the part that sucks the most for me. Figuring out proper etiquette amongst humans still makes me uneasy because the rules have changed so many times in the last twenty years alone that I have trouble keeping up. It makes me miss the company of my own kind.

Jeffrey gives me a sympathetic look and pushes in front of me and I sigh mentally in relief. He’s just going to chalk this up to me being a shy and nervous person, so I haven’t committed any serious social infraction. I walk in after him, careful to keep as close to him as possible to maintain my shy girl persona.

I have heard other humans describe the moment they walk into a house to meet new fosters as the march of doom because there is an incredible amount of pressure to impress them, to make them _want_ to keep you around. No one wants to end up back at state facilities, but a lot of us do for various reasons. I’m probably not the only person who has worked the system to find a family in a preferred locale. Probably not the only dragon, either, come to think of it. The ones who get shifted constantly from home to home are either the troublemakers or the abused... and once you have been with an abusive family, you tend to find yourself in a cycle of abusive homes. I do not know why this happens, but I have seen it occur over and over again. I think humans must be emotional masochists, to put themselves into unfavorable conditions over and over again.

I’m shying away from thinking about the moment fast approaching me--the moment I will have to look into the eyes of my new foster siblings and introduce myself. It is not the first time I have wished for the easy formality of etiquette I am accustomed to from my own kind and it will not be the last, I’m sure. I know amongst the richer humans, there are many more formalities and rituals observed than amongst the poorer ones, but I do not know why this separation exists. To me, one human is just as human as another, but they have insisted on dividing themselves into different socioeconomic classes, labeling one another based on their income. Which is yet another thing I find ridiculous. Money is just paper and yet they steal it, murder one another for it, even wages wars over it. I do not understand why they have made it so important.

I understand that a society must have some type of currency in order to thrive. Even we have our own methods of payment. But that payment is generally in the form of a favor owed or a service provided and then returned in kind at a later date. It takes from no one anything they do not have to give and requires no struggle to acquire the means to pay for whatever trade is made. I have seen a few human cultures do this, but the greed they have to claim something as their own, to possess it completely...this has ruined many human societies in the past that could have thrived for millennia if only they hadn't’t succumbed to their absolute need to own everything around them.

I sigh inwardly, forcing my attention back to the present. I am doing it again, thinking of anything but the people I am about to meet. And I can see their feet from where I am shadowing my foster father, because I am keeping my eyes glued to the floor. It is not unreasonable for me to assume they came bounding into the living room the moment they heard the car pull into the driveway--after all, there is no doubt in my mind that the three of them have been expecting our arrival for some time.

“Hi Dad,” a girl says and I glance sideways and up in order to see who has spoken. The girl is not much of a girl--she is much more womanly than that. I assume that this can be no one other than Terra. All I know about her is that she works at the local cafe, which bears the prestigious name of Miracle Cafe. I hope the coffee is good for a place that boasts such a lofty name. The woman is around 5‘6“, slightly taller than the average human female. Her waist and hips are slender and her body is well-proportioned. Her torso, arms, and legs seem to be about equal in length and it strikes me that this is one of the few humans I have ever seen who is just slightly off from perfect symmetry. It is an odd thing to see and I can feel my eyes trying to shift in order to find the minute imperfections that are sure to exist. There is no human that is perfectly symmetrical, as much as they desire exactly that, but Terra comes very close. I force my eyes away from her, though I have not been caught looking, and glance at the other two that have come into the room.

The boy.. no, the teenager--it would not do for me to forget how much younger humans despise being treated as children when they are children--stands 5‘9“, a bit taller than his sister. Both of them are taller than Jeffrey, who can’t be much more than 5‘3“. The height must be a latent gene, because their mother is only 5‘5“ herself. To be shorter than their children surely distresses them, though I have already gleaned that they are not the type of humans who complain openly and are instead one of the most no-nonsense families I have ever fallen into meeting. The thought amuses me, but I hold my laughter in check. It will not do to antagonize any of the potential pawns in front of me. No, for now, I must play my part perfectly.

Jason, the teenager, is standing with his hands tucked into his pockets, and he is doing the side glance thing I have seen human males do towards females they are interested in pursuing for reproductive purposes while trying not to get caught looking. Why this is a necessary ritual for human males, I still do not understand. Nor do I particularly want to. And it doesn't’t matter how long Jason looks at my female form--I am not interested in any sort of sexual liaison with a human. The idea, aside from being very disturbing, is nonsense. While I could, theoretically, partake in human sexual activities, I would still be a dragon mixing with a human. Our species are just too different for it to be thinkable. That being said, I am sure there are younger dragons who have experimented with it. I doubt that anything lasting came about, of course, because they would realize very quickly just how limited human beings really are in their physicality and would quickly grow bored of it.

At least I know now that Jason will pose me no threat. He is stealing glances, rather than ogling, so I have no fear that he will try to find a moment alone in order to molest this form. I have dealt with lecherous foster brothers and fathers before and it is more tedious than anything else. It does not make me afraid and so the pleasure they intended to get out of the situation disappears rapidly. I am sure some of the government workers wonder how I have managed to avoid having this form raped by the men I’ve been around in my previous homes, but I have never enlightened them. It is not my purpose to solve their problems.

My purpose, for the time being, is to make myself a welcome member of the Phlanx family. This is the last stop for me. The Great Forgetting is finally here. All our plans, everything we’ve set into motion, is starting to come to a head. A few more weeks and it will be time.

As the satisfaction I feel at that thought flows through me, I chance a glance down at the youngest child. Lea, the eight year old, is staring up at me with wide green eyes that hold more curiosity for the world around her than the eyes of every adult in the room. I give her a small, secret smile, because it is children like her who are the greatest risk to me. Magic is real and children are attuned to it, even now when humans have virtually bred it out of themselves entirely. As humans age, they forget the way magic feels and thus let go of the trace amounts of it they clung to in childhood. But for children, magic is the air they breathe. Everything they do is based on make-believe and fairy tales. And I am a creature straight out of one of her fairy tales and she senses that, even if she doesn't’t know that is what she is sensing. So I am incredibly careful around children, making sure to become their friend before anyone else when they are part of a foster family that may end up being a long term stay. I cannot afford to be exposed and to overlook something like this--something that seems minute and insignificant--would be to commit the crime of overconfidence. And as I have said before, the consequences of such a crime are dire and doubly so for me, the War Leader for the entire Crystal Clan--the only Clan that remained fully intact despite the horrors that occurred during the Wars.

 


	2. Chapter Two

_ -Jason- _

 

It’s one thing when your parents decide they’re going to have a second child. It’s another thing entirely when they decide they’re going to house a foster child without talking to the rest of the family about it first. Having two sisters already, I really don’t feel a need for a third. At all. But my parents didn't’t even think to ask me if I was okay with the decision they made on their own. Of course, they didn't’t ask Terra and Lea either, but both of them were so enthused when our parents told them what they had decided that it was obvious they would have been all for it if it was a decision the entire family had participated in. So once again, I’m the odd man out. Story of my life. 

Every one in my family, aside from me, is so down to earth and no-nonsense that it astonishes me when any of them claim to be having fun doing anything. Of course, Lea is an exception to that because she’s eight years old, but I’m sure my parents will drive her childish naivete out of her before she turns twelve. They tried to do it with me, too, but I guess I was too stubborn for them. I am a constant disappointment to them because I still believe that the Draconic Wars really happened and that dragons really did walk the earth twelve thousand years ago. 

I don’t get why they are so dead set against believing what our history books tell us happened. It’s like the people who say the Holocaust didn't’t happen. What about the victims and their families? I’m sure it was a nightmare to live through. And no one goes around accusing Holocaust survivors or their children of lying about the existence of death camps. But what we did to the dragons during the Draconic Wars is so much worse than what happened during the Holocaust that part of me understands why people are so keen to forget it. But they are forgetting that the past has a tendency to repeat itself, especially when people forget what has happened. 

I sit down at my desk with a sigh. It has been about six hours since my parents left to pick up our new sister. I think my parents told us that her name was Alicia Thomas, if I am remembering things right. They also told us that she has been bounced from one foster home to another, managing to go through eight this year alone. When I think about the potential reason for this, all I can think is that she must be some kind of troublemaker. Why else would eight families throw her to social services to deal with?  And why are my parents okay with taking in a troublemaker? They say fairly often that they have enough on their plates with me.

Which, really, is just another way I disappoint my family. Because I don’t back down from the bullies at school who make fun of me for my insistence that dragons existed, that the Wars really happened. I find it much too important to allow any threat of violence to push me from my path. I need to get people to see that the Wars were real. That dragons existed. That they might  _ still _ exist, though even I am a bit unsure on that point. After all, the history books do say that dragons were completely exterminated. But there is no way that the humans of twelve thousand years ago knew everything about dragons. So there is surely some possibility that they have thrived and are living on this planet even now. Where they would hide, I have no idea, because every picture I have ever seen of a dragon suggests that their enormous bulk would make them incredibly easy to spot. 

So I don’t back down from the people who want me to admit that dragons are a fairy tale, the Wars just a cleverly spun tale to scare children with at night. Because if even our history books are starting to doubt the truth of what happened back then, it doesn't’t bode well for the future. What if every war, every major historical event, just a few thousand years in the future, comes under the shadow of doubt? What will that say for our nation, for humanity itself? That we can’t learn from past mistakes? That we run from problems? I don’t know exactly what will happen, but I know it can’t be anything good. 

So I’I'll be a disappointment to my family if I have to, because this--the preservation of accurate history--is far more important to me than whether or not my parents can look at me with anything other than disappointment. If I needed my family to be proud of me, I would never have spoken up the first time my history teacher said that the Wars were just a myth. I would never have fought back when Morris, the biggest bully in my year, decided I was an easy target because I had no friends. No one wants to stand beside the guy who still believes in dragons. It’s like being the last person to give up playing with toys. Except that it isn’t, because the Wars happened. I can feel the truth of that in the very essence of my being. 

I hear the crunch of gravel and the sound of an engine cutting off. That must mean the new sister has arrived. I force myself to get to my feet and trudge my way to the living room. I have no real desire to meet her, but I also don’t want to make a horrible first impression with a girl that may end up staying with us long term. Besides that, I have a small hope that maybe she will be at least halfway open-minded and willing to at least  _ listen _ to what I have to say about dragons. It’s a small hope, considering I am the only person I know who has any real interest in pursuing the truth about them. 

Terra and Lea are already standing in the room when I reach it, which is no surprise considering how eager they both are for another girl to do girl things with. I roll my eyes slightly, making sure they can’t see me. I have never understood the need girls have to become cliquish with each other when all they do is gossip about the people in their little group when certain people are absent. Girls are some of the most ruthless people I know. I tend to stay away from them because of that. I have enough to deal with; I don’t need the added danger of trying to guess what a girl has on her mind. 

I stand a bit away from the two of them, feeling awkward. I stick my hands in my jeans pocket, wishing that I could go back to my room. Inviting a lecture from my parents for being rude is the last thing I want to do, though, so I stay standing there. It doesn't’t diminish the awkward atmosphere in any way, but at least I know that we just have to greet this new foster sibling and then I can go back to the privacy of my own room. I find myself feeling eager to get this entire thing over with. Social interaction is not my strong point. No real surprise, there, considering how the people at school avoid me. Like they think belief in dragons is contagious or something. 

My dad comes into the house first, followed by the girl that must be Alicia. I can’t really get a good look at her yet--she’s standing pretty much perfectly in my dad’s shadow. I feel a pang of sympathy for her; she must feel completely overwhelmed coming into a family of strangers. At the same time, I remember that she has been bounced from family to family in the last year and I find my sympathy growing. She is so incredibly shy and rather timid that the very idea she could be a troublemaker is laughable. 

Once everyone is fully in the living room, with my mom being the last one in, my dad takes a step to the side so that I get my first real look at the girl who is getting ready to fill the role of my third sister. 

Her hair is a light brown, falling in a soft line to her shoulders. It curls slightly around her face, making her heart-shaped face stand on a bit more prominently. Her ears seem almost dainty, like they are a bit too small for her head and her cheekbones carry the slight hint of red, like she’s always perpetually on the verge of blushing. I glance quickly at her eyes, relieved to see she’s not looking at me, to see what color her eyes are. They are a soft green, so light they could be mistaken as blue in the right lighting. But they don’t shine the way I have seen other eyes of this color...rather, they seem almost afraid of showing their color, the green is so muted. 

At a guess, I say she’s probably about 5‘3, shorter than most of the people in the room aside from my little sister. She is slim and I am careful to keep my eyes above the shoulders once my cursory glance tells me what she is wearing. The purple half-shirt she has on should suggest that she is comfortable with her body and knows she is good looking, but the way she wears it says that she finds it just as immodest as my mother does. It must be the only clothes she had to wear. That thought makes another pang of sympathy shoot through me. The long shorts she has on seem to be glued to her skin and I have a feeling her legs aren't’t getting much air. The black flip-flops she has on her feet seem well-worn. They are the only thing she is wearing that makes me feel she may be attached to them. I can’t blame her; good flip-flops are hard to find, and once you’ve broken them in, it takes a lot of wear and tear before making a decision to buy another pair. 

My dad places a gentle hand on Alicia’s arm and tugs slightly, indicating to her that she should step forward. I can’t really see how she reacts to this because her eyes are focused on the ground and I can’t get a good look at them anymore. And truthfully, my eyes are doing a bit of wandering, because she is a fairly attractive girl. I shake my head. These thoughts are not appropriate ones to have about someone who is getting ready to be part of my family, but I can’t deny the fact she is pretty. And her shy demeanor just enhances that. It makes me want to keep her safe, which is a good brotherly type of urge to have, but it’s also the way any guy would respond to a girl so shy. I sigh mentally and force myself to focus on the current moment. There will be time later to consider the moral ramifications of my attraction towards my new foster sister. 

“This is Alicia,” Mom says. She turns so that she is blocking Alicia’s left side, almost as if she is protecting her from us. I don’t think she knows that she is doing it intentionally but I have to smother a laugh. It is not often I see my mom take on any sort of protective role towards anyone outside of Lea. It also makes me a bit sad, because it tells me that Alicia may be shy for unnatural reasons. 

“Hi, Alicia,” Terra says, inching closer towards the girl. “My name is Terra.” She holds out her hand gently, as if she is afraid that sudden movements will scare the girl. 

Alicia looks up tentatively, bites her lip, then holds up her own hand. She takes Terra’s hand, but I see the nearly imperceptible flinch that overcomes her as flesh meets flesh. “Hi,” she says softly. 

Her voice sounds slightly like a soft breeze and I shiver a bit; everything she does is just making me like her more. This is a problem. I cannot afford to like my new sister. It’s not appropriate in any way. And even if I do end up being attracted to her, I know I can never violate the trust a sister should always have for a brother. She will never know, if I can help it, that I find her in any way attractive.

Lea darts up to Alicia with the naivete only a child her age can display; she seems completely impervious to the full body flinch her speed has caused the girl and is staring up at her with wide eyes. “Hi!” she says enthusiastically, wrapping herself around Alicia’s waist in a hug. 

Alicia freezes for a moment--I suppose to let the shock catch up to her--and then smiles softly at Lea. She takes Lea’s fingers, removing them from her waist gently, and kneels down so that she is on a more even keel with the eight year old. “What’s your name?” she asks. The shy softness has completely gone out of her tone, replaced with unmistakable affection. 

I find myself smiling at the scene before me. My youngest sister, Lea, is the one I worried about the most, because she is so young and her age makes her incredibly sensitive to the words people say to her. I was slightly scared that Alicia would turn out to be a bully--after all, the only thing I had to base anything off of was the fact she’s been bounced through so many families in the past year. But it seems my fear was ungrounded. 

Lea’s eyes light right up when she realizes this is a grown-up who is going to take her seriously. I stifle a laugh behind my hand as I watch her. “I’m Lea!” she says. Remembering her manners, she says, “What’s your name?” Of course, she already knows it, but this is a game she likes to play with strangers. 

“Why, my name is Alicia. It’s very nice to meet you.” 

“It’s nice to meet you too,” Lea says, folding her hands over her chest in a gesture that indicates stubbornness rather than pleasure in meeting a new friend. 

I laugh softly; I can’t help it. Lea is being so contradictory in her words and her actions it’s absurd. Laughing is the only option, or “awwing” the way Terra and Mom are doing, but I’m a guy. I just don’t do that cutesy thing. 

“Jason, don’t laugh at me!” Lea yells, running over to me and hitting my leg with a fist. 

I reach down and swing her up into my arms, mostly to keep her from hitting me. 

She lets out a squeal as I pick her up. “Let me go!” she demands. 

“Nu-uh,” I say, grinning at her. 

“Mom, Dad, make him put me down!” she says. 

They are too busy laughing themselves now to listen to her. 

I grin evilly at her as I shift her into one arm. She’s fairly light, even for an eight year old, and I inch my other hand towards her stomach, making it obvious that I’m getting ready to tickle her. 

“No!” she yells and starts wiggling in my grasp. 

I expect this, of course, and tighten my grip. I can keep a one-handed grip on her because I have plenty of practice at doing so. 

“No,” she yells again, right as my hand makes contact with her belly. 

I tickle her in earnest, until she is half-gasping from laughter and almost crying from it. 

“Stop it,” she pants. “Jason, stop!”

I sense that she is reaching the point where it is going to be too much tickling and I don’t want to cause her any harm, so I stop tickling her and set her down. She immediately runs to Alicia, which I find surprising but I mask that surprise immediately. Normally she runs to Terra, but perhaps she is testing her new sister in her own way.

Alicia reaches down and picks her up too and my eyes widen in shock. This dainty girl whose arms look like they might break if she tries to lift anything over ten pounds is holding my eight year old sister with the same practiced ease I had, one-handed. “Did mean old Jason tickle you too much?” she asks softly, her voice a mere murmur. 

Lea nods and rests her head on Alicia’s shoulder. Before five minutes pass, the eight year old is fast asleep. I must have worn her out. 

Alicia grins at me and I feel my heart skip a beat. I’m the first person in the family aside from Lea that she has regarded with any sort of warmth. I don’t know if my parents or Terra saw the quick exchange, since her face was mostly blocked by Lea’s sleeping form, but it makes me think there may be more to this girl than the shy woman who walked into our house. 

Before I can think to say anything to her, before I can gather my wits enough to even think about responding to that smile, Terra tugs her arm and leads her out of the room. I glance at the clock. It’s five fifteen, so she must be showing Alicia to her new room so that she can get settled in a bit before dinner. 

Mom has already left the room and I can hear the distant sound of pots clanging from the kitchen. She is cooking dinner, of course, as she always does around this time. Seeing that there is no one left in the room except my dad, I shrug and retreat to my room. I don’t want to talk to him and he probably doesn't’t want to talk to me, considering how many things we disagree on. It’s normally best to pretend the other doesn't’t exist whenever we can; neither one of us really wants to argue with the other--it always ends badly. Don’t get me wrong, my dad and I don’t get violent with one another in any way, but our arguments tend to divide the family because they get so heated. I’m sure one is coming at dinner anyway, since there’s no way he hasn't’t heard the reports from school by now. 

It’s Saturday now, but Monday will be the start of the second week of the first semester of my senior year at high school. Since school started, I have already been in two fights. One with Morris, which ended with me going to the nurse’s office for a split lip and a couple of bruised ribs. I never win fights against Morris--the kid is nearly three times my size. I’m lucky if I don’t end up with something broken after our fights. And we fight constantly; he’s been a thorn in my side since sixth grade. He just never grows up and I guess I never learned how to back down from a fight with a bully. He doesn't’t intimidate me, he doesn't’t scare me--all he can do is bang me up a little. And physical pain is nothing in comparison to the humiliation I suffer every day at the hands of my family--humiliation caused by the knowledge that none of them give anything I say any credence. 

As I walk to my room, my mind is filled with thoughts of my new foster sister. I know that I shouldn't’t find her attractive, that I shouldn't’t be drawn to her physically in any way, but I’m only human. And she’s hot. Plain and simple. Now I just have to figure out how to push that thought to the back of my mind and never let it affect any decision I make about the relationship between the two of us. I am determined to treat her like a sister, the same way I treat Terra and Lea. I have always stood up for the two of them--well, for Terra at least. Lea is still young and hasn't’t had the misfortune of her dreams being torn away from her yet. 

Terra is ten years older than me and she can hold her own in a fight--I’ve seen it firsthand when some of the customers at Miracle get a bit too handsy for her liking. But there have been a couple times where I have had to get her out of some bad situations. I don’t like thinking about those incidents; it makes my hands curl into fists of their own accord at the very thought of what went down. I shake my head. Right now I need to figure out how I am going to balance my attraction towards Alicia with my moral obligation to protect her the way a brother should. 

My father may not like some of the things I say or agree with my beliefs, but he expects me to be a good man when it comes to how I treat women. And that is one of the few areas where we see eye to eye. I see the guys at school mistreat women on a daily basis and it is all I can do not to jump to defend their honor. I would gladly jump to their defense if my reputation wasn't’t so bad because of my insistence that dragons existed that any help I offered would just be considered an insult to them. Plus, if I am seen defending anyone or anything, Morris and his cronies flock to it. It’s like painting a target on someone. I don’t want to cause that kind of distress to anyone other than myself. I don’t really want to cause myself distress, either, but I won’t allow the rest of society to tell me what I should believe or how I should go about my life. I will not back down from the truth and that makes people uneasy. And the things that make people uneasy make them angry. I know that. So I have to live every day with the knowledge that I am responsible for my own misery. 

I push open the door to the bathroom that adjoins my bedroom and step inside, throwing a cursory glance towards the alarm clock sitting on the nightstand beside my bed. The red numbers glare at me across the room, telling me that is thirty past five. I wince; that gives me barely half an hour to take a shower and get comfortable before dinner. If I hurry, I can take a shower in about twenty minutes, but I won’t be able to allow myself the luxury of standing in the hot water for any length of time. I huff a bit, but since there’s nothing I can do about it, I pull my blue t-shirt off and step out of my jeans and boxers in one motion. Kicking them to the side, I reach behind me and close the door. Just in case Terra and Lea decide to come by my room. Or god forbid, Alicia. There’s nothing more mortifying than having your sisters see you naked. 

I reach down to the faucet in the tub and turn on the hot water, adjusting the temperature with the cold faucet as needed. Once it reaches a good temperature, I flip the lever that turns the shower head on and draw the curtain closed. I’ve been yelled at too many times for allowing my floor to become a sodden mess to want to be yelled at again for the same reason. 

Giving the water a second to adjust--for some reason, even when I have the water perfect coming out of the faucet, it still comes out cold for the first few seconds it comes out of the shower head, I turn back to make sure my pajamas are where I left them this morning. I sigh in relief when I see they are still folded neatly on the side of the sink. Sometimes my mom gets it into her head to move them into the dirty laundry hamper in my room when I’ve only worn them one night. It’s like she doesn't’t understand that pajamas can be worn at least three times in a row before they need to be washed. 

I think she assumes that because I am a teenage boy that I can’t control my sexual urges. Of course, she’s right on the mark, but I don’t do  _ that  _ in my pajamas. Actually, my long showers are generally the perfect time to take care of that problem. The idea of my mom finding clothes covered with my gunk mortifies me. She still does the laundry of every person that lives in this house, so I am very careful not to get anything dirty in a way that she might find distasteful. 

The thought of my mom finding clothes like that immediately drives away the thoughts I was harboring towards Alicia and I sigh in relief. At least that problem is taken care of for now. I didn't’t really want to go to dinner with evidence that makes it obvious I feel lustful towards my new foster sister. 

Figuring the water has had enough time to heat up, I pull back the end of the curtain furthest away from the faucet to allow me just enough room to step into the shower. Once I am in the tub, I pull the curtain closed again and pick up my shampoo. Stepping under the water, I turn my back to the torrent of water coming down. I hate the way water feels hitting me straight in the face, so I always turn backwards. Running a hand through my hair to make sure it’s wet enough--even though I already know it is, it’s just an ingrained habit--I pop open the shampoo bottle and squeeze some into my palm. Setting the shampoo container back down in its proper place with my free hand, I step forward out of the spray of the water and reach both hands up to make sure I get the shampoo worked into a proper lather as I apply it to my hair. 

I step back under the spray of water, letting it do most of the work as it sloshes the shampoo out of my hair. I run my hands through my hair a few times after the initial rinse to make sure I have gotten rid of all the soap. I don’t want to find my scalp itching later tonight because I wasn't’t thorough enough when washing my hair. Satisfied, I pick up the soap and washcloth and scrub myself down in earnest, going as quickly as I can while still being efficient. Done, I feel the urge I always do to remain in the shower and just luxuriate in the feel of the water coming down on my skin, the warmth of it helping to relax my muscles. But I remember that the clock in my room said it was half past when I came into the bathroom and that my parents already have enough reason to yell at me without me giving them further ammunition by being late for dinner. 

I force myself to reach over and turn the faucet off, shutting off the water. I pull back the curtain, sighing in relief when I see that no water has run out into the floor. That means I’m not going to have to spend five minutes sopping up the floor before I can get dressed. That really  _ would _ make me late for dinner and I’m already not looking forward to it. I mean, the food will be good, because my mom is a great cook. But the topic of conversation will no doubt be my fight with Morris. Oh. And the other fight I got into with my World History teacher on the second day of school. I wince. I’d almost forgotten about that incident. 

The fight with Mr. Tyler was over the Draconic Wars of course. It isn’t my fault that the teacher decided the first topic we’re covering this semester happens to be the Wars that I have read everything about. My fascination with those Wars started when I was seven and my family went to a re-enactment of them. I didn't’t realize at the time that the only reason we went was to be polite to one of my dad’s bosses. I mean, I was seven after all. Keeping in a boss’s good graces never struck me as something that was necessary back then.

But that event was what got me hooked on the Draconic Wars. Watching people going around dressed as dragons and pretending to be annihilated during that re-enactment made me curious about what actually happened those twelve thousand years ago. As I watched everything going on around me, I remember wondering where the dragons were. Why they weren't’t telling their side of the story. And I remember asking my mom, who took me aside and gently told me that according to history, the dragons had all been killed during the Wars. I got so upset at that we ended up having to leave early, my dad making his apologies to his boss’s family, because I couldn't’t stand being around the fake dragons anymore. Not after I knew that humans were so brutal and ruthless that they could completely wipe out another species and then mock that species twelve millennia after that genocide. 

But fighting with a teacher is almost never a good idea, not only because it mars my school records but because my parents are completely obsessed with their own reputation. Anything I do sullies my father’s reputation (or so he says, though really I think he just says it in order to try to make me behave in a way he considers appropriate, rather than in a way that supports the truth), so he is always after me to behave in a more appropriate manner.

I sigh and reach for my pajamas after toweling myself dry. Dinner is sure to be horrible, but there is no sense in delaying the inevitable. Especially when all I can do by delaying is make what is going to be an unpleasant evening downright miserable. I pull on the clean boxers I set out this morning, then pull the red flannel pajama bottoms up my legs. I shrug the matching top onto my shoulders and button all but the top two buttons. I grab the comb sitting on the other side of the sink, next to my deodorant and shaving cream, and run it through my hair a couple times to make sure it lies flat. I don’t have much hair to speak of, so I don’t get crazy poofy hair syndrome the way my sisters do after they shower, which means a cursory comb through is generally good enough to last me the entire day. 

I square my shoulders and face myself in the mirror, steeling myself for what is about to happen. I feel a small hope blossom that maybe Alicia’s presence in the house will keep my parents halfway civil towards me, but I squash it ruthlessly. They aren't’t the kind of people to act nice in front of someone who is going to be part of the family. They pride themselves too much on honesty within the family for that. Of course, that is not the way they operate around outsiders. To strangers, it is imperative that we maintain the perfect cover as the perfect middle class family. The hypocrisy of all of it disgusts me. But they are my parents and I do try to do my best by them, even if all they can see is what they consider my bad qualities. 

“Dinner,” Mom calls from the kitchen. 

Okay. Time to do this thing. I take one last deep breath and try not to act like someone marching to his doom as I make my way to the dinner table. I don’t want them to see how badly their words affect me, don’t want them to know that I wish they took me more seriously. It is a dream that I have forbidden myself from pursuing, because the pursuit of truth is much more important. Losing my family’s belief in me is just one small sacrifice of many that I have made for finding the truth. And I am almost one hundred percent certain that it is not the last thing I will have to sacrifice throughout my life in order to piece together an accurate accounting of the Draconic Wars and find out what really happened to the dragons. 

When I get to the kitchen, it comes as no surprise to me that I am the last to arrive. But a sideways glance at the analog clock on the wall tells me that I am not late. It is exactly six, which has been the time we have eaten dinner for the past seventeen years, unless external circumstances prevented it. The table is an eight-seater, with three chairs on both the left and right, and one chair each at the head and foot of the table. As is customary, my dad is sitting at the head of the table, my mom to his left and Terra at his right. Lea is rubbing sleepily at her eyes from her spot beside Terra and Alicia is looking at her sympathetically from across the table where she sits next to my mother. 

Even at home, I’m the outsider. I sit at the foot of the table, as has been my customary spot since I was ten and told that until I could let go of my foolish belief in dragons, I was not welcome any closer to my family than that during meals. It was one of the cruelest things my dad ever said to me when I was that young and I immediately looked to my mom for support, but found none. Even Terra didn't’t speak up for me, the way she had before. Apparently ten was the age my parents decided was too old for fairy tales and Terra was their perfect child. 

Being two seats away from everyone has sometimes served me very well, especially on those nights where the arguments between me and my father (and the rest of the family, who generally ends up backing him up) got so heated that the only reasonable response left was to just pick myself up and leave the table and let everyone cool down, myself included. 

After I take my seat, Alicia glances at me curiously then back at the rest of the family and shrugs. She is probably drawing her own conclusions. I find myself suddenly feeling self-conscious. I don’t want this girl to be yet another person of my family who thinks I am worthy of being ostracized. I am so sick of my solitude, it hurts. I grit my teeth hard, bottling the words I long to say inside as I wait for my dad to start the prayer he always says before every meal.

Unlike the rest of my family, I do not hold with religion. It is yet another way I differ from them and something on my best days that I find completely ludicrous. After all, they pride themselves on being down-to-earth and no-nonsense, yet every day, at every meal, they pray to a god they cannot see and whose existence cannot be proven. I have never told them that I don’t believe in god, of course, so I end up being dragged to church every Sunday with the rest of them, but it’s not a battle I want to fight. Not when I am already waging such a large battle against them and against the rest of the world who is determined to prove that dragons never walked the earth. 

My dad bows his head and I follow suit. I have found that in some things, it is better just to go along rather than argue with my family. Religion is one of them. I don’t actively defend a belief in god to anyone the way my parents and my sisters do, but I don’t actively deny a belief in god either. In my mind, god is neither real nor unreal, since his existence can be neither proven nor disproved. So I remain decidedly in the middle of the road of uncertainty when it comes to faith.

I have compared my belief that dragons existed to my parents’ insistence in a god in my own mind and found it to be a much more compelling argument to my parents’ insistence in god’s existence. After all, there are historical documents and archaeological evidence that dragons existed. Then I come up against the existence of the Bible as proof of god’s existence and I shy away from it because there is so much controversy surrounding it. 

It is said that the people who wrote the bible wrote it while serving as a medium to god, having him speak his words through them. But really, even if that is what happened, the words are still going to be tainted by the perspective of the human who received them. No one sees the world the same way and what god--if he exists--may have intended with the words the humans heard him speak may very well not be the words that were written down. Or if the words were entirely accurate, the interpretation of them comes into question because what human can truly understand the meaning of god? 

Really, what is more absurd to me than the idea that god exists is the idea that if he exists, he cares one way or another what people do with their lives. Why would someone want to govern their own creation? Wouldn't’t’t it be more fulfilling to simply watch it grow into its own potential on its own? Rather than limiting its growth with such absurdities as commandments and bylaws only found in ancient text. 

My dad finally reaches the end of saying grace. We all murmur a quiet “Amen,” even me. I notice that Alicia is a fraction late in saying it and wonder idly if maybe she thinks of religion the same way I do. It is an idle curiosity, of course, because it doesn't’t matter one way or the other. No, the true test of whether or not she may prove a true friend to me is coming up soon enough. I pull the potatoes towards me, deliberately avoiding meeting anyone’s gaze, as I load my plate. Afterwards, I stand up and lean over the table a bit so I can stab a chunk of steak with my fork and bring my plate to it so that I don’t make a mess over the table. I do the same with the green beans and pluck a roll of its platter before sitting back down. I want to finish eating before my dad starts in on his lecture. 

I dig in with quiet relish, trying to take time to savor each flavor at the same time that I’m trying to rush through the meal. It’s an incredibly hard balance to maintain, but I manage to finish eating in about ten minutes. I sigh in silent relief when I realize my dad is only halfway through his plate. He always waits until after he is done eating before he starts in on me. But he will start in on me, I have no doubt about that. 

And I can’t ask to be excused; the rule in this family is that no one leaves the table until everyone does. Of course, I have broken that rule when the arguments have gotten too heated because breaking that small rule is much better than engaging my father in violence. And we have come close a couple times. It is has become an unspoken understanding that if things get too heated, I am allowed to leave the table to diffuse the tension. I don’t know if that really helps, of course, but it seems to work okay for us. 

I slump back against my chair, having learned the trick of slumping while looking like I’m sitting properly years ago. My mom insists on proper posture. It must be a teacher thing. Anyway, I don’t want her to look over here and see me sitting improperly and then get a second lecture from her on top of the one I am already going to get from my father. I glance at my dad’s plate and see that all he has left now are the potatoes. He isn’t a slow eater either, so I am genuinely relieved that I was able to finish before him. Nothing spoils my appetite as much as being yelled at while I’m trying to eat. And I would rather die than make my mom think she is a bad cook. She has fairly low self-esteem when it comes to her cooking, even though she is the only person my dad will let cook him food. He is very particular over that. I think maybe my mom knows she is a good cook but wants the extra praise. Whatever. It’s not a hardship for any of us to praise her cooking. It is, after all, simply delicious. 

Of course, the best thing she makes is desert. I grow wistful as I think about the last time I ate one of her deserts, which was last Christmas. It is another one of the insane rules my parents have imposed on me--I am not allowed deserts except during holidays--in order to try to force me into accepting that dragons never existed. But even being denied sweets is not enough to dent my determination to pursue the truth. Every day I harbor a hope that maybe today will be the day they lift the ridiculous restrictions they restrain me with, but it isn’t a hope that I seriously entertain.

My dad is finished eating. I look everywhere but at him, hoping maybe if I avoid eye contact he will forget about the two fights he has no doubt heard reports about by now. It is a futile hope, I know that, but I still can’t help wanting to avoid just one day of fighting. Especially when there’s a new family member to consider. 

As I think of her, I look at Alicia and notice that her steak is already gone. She is pushing the beans around her plate and I see a small grimace as she forces herself to take a bite. Not a fan of vegetables? Or is it just green beans she dislikes? The potatoes and the roll on her plate are still untouched and I wonder if she is going to leave them there entirely or if she is just a slow eater. Seeing how long it takes her to force down the one green bean she ensnared on her fork, I deduce it must be the latter. She seems so frail and dainty that it doesn't’t strike me as surprising that she is also a slow eater. 

I glance at my younger sister, who is glaring at the green bean on her fork for all she is worth and I have to smother a laugh. Lea  _ hates _ beans. It doesn't’t matter what kind of bean it is, if it is anywhere near her, she has a staring contest with it. Our parents require us to finish every article of food put on our plate and Lea is no exception to the rule. I have seen nights where she has stayed up to nearly midnight because she is so stubborn about the foods she dislikes. There is a kind of ruthlessness about my parents when it comes to enforcing their rules, but I wouldn't’t’t say they are abusive. Their methods are mostly effective, except, of course, when it comes to me. It’s no wonder I cause them no end of irritation. I refuse to be cowed by the tactics they use to stubborn us children into submission. It must be because I truly am my father’s son and have a stubborn streak just as wide as his. It hurts my pride to back down from a challenge, especially when I know I’m in the right. My dad probably feels the same way. 

As I think of him, my gaze inadvertently slides away from my sister and to him. Which is, of course, the exact moment he has been waiting for. He is adamant about maintaining eye contact during any type of conversation and I have to hide a flinch as I meet his gaze. I cannot afford to show him that I find his gaze slightly unnerving or that I find him at all intimidating. But the truth is that I do find his gaze unnerving and he does intimidate me. He is my father, after all, no matter what I may say or think about him. Part of me still deeply desires his respect and approval, despite the decision I made when I was eleven years old not to seek after it actively.

“Jason,” he says. “It’s been a week since school started and I hear you’ve already been in two fights. Is this true?” 

I don’t know why he insists on asking this question. I think maybe he is testing my integrity, to see if I have the gall to lie to his face. But there’s no point in lying--after all, my entire purpose is to seek after the truth. Not to mention, lying about something someone already knows to be true is both an affront to them and to myself. It’s like watching someone steal a woman’s purse and then asking the guy you watched steal it if he took it and having him say no. It’s a pointless exercise, but my dad exists on it. I shrug mentally. Whatever. If he wants to play these mind games with me to amuse himself, he can do what he wants. I have a feeling he wouldn't’t’t get far against someone with any true talent for mind games, considering how obvious his attempts to play them are. It almost makes me feel sympathetic towards him. Almost, but not quite. “Yes,” I say simply. There’s no reason to say anything else. 

“The fight with Morris. What was it about?” 

I sigh. “He heard about the argument I had with Mr. Tyler and thought he would teach me a lesson about talking back to my betters.” That was exactly how he had phrased it too. I make sure to keep my voice free from the bitterness I feel. My parents are going to side with Morris on this; they tend to side with him even though he’s the biggest bully in school because they figure if they can’t teach me a lesson, maybe someone who beats me up on a daily basis can. 

“Why were you fighting with a teacher?” Dad asks, his voice so mild it immediately betrays to me what he is actually angry about. He doesn't’t care that I fought with Morris. He is concerned because I talked back to a teacher, that I was disrespectful towards someone in authority. He has voiced his concerns to me over and over again that I am going to end up as some sort of street kid, maybe even in jail before I’m twenty. Any time he thinks I’m defying authority, he pulls out the same speech. It is so routine it’s boring. 

“Because he decided the first topic we are covering in history is the Draconic Wars.” 

“And what made you think that gave you the right to talk back to him?” Dad asks.

Lea giggles and speaks up. She hasn't’t learned yet that when me and Dad are talking, it’s best not to interrupt us. “Because Jason still believes in dragons, Daddy!” Her comment makes it seem obvious that there is no other possible reason I would have for talking back to my history teacher. I have to admit, even if only to myself, that she’s right. 

Instead of responding to her, my dad fixes me with a glare. 

I match him stare for stare as I think of something adequate to say. Without meaning to, my gaze slips sideways to Alicia even while I am maintaining the staring match with my dad and I see that she is actually interested in this argument. Whether to see what my dad does or says or what I do or say, I have no idea. But it is the first time since she’s been here that I have seen her exhibit any type of interest in anything other than Lea. 

“Well?” Dad says. 

I shrug. “Lea’s right,” I say. “Mr. Tyler decided the first topic of the year was to be whether or not the Draconic Wars existed. He insisted they never happened, even though there are thousands of history books that say otherwise.” I notice that Alicia’s shoulders have tensed, but I don’t really know what to think of it. I’m not sure if she’s on my side or my dad’s. I may find out tonight; I may not. I don’t know how well she handles confrontation but she seems rather frail. I’m not sure I want to find out if she even  _ can _ handle confrontation. 

Dad lets out an exasperated sigh of frustration, bringing his hand down to the table as if he intends to hit his fist on it. It’s like he remembers at the last second that other people are eating and he settles for just gently tapping it. It doesn't’t really help emphasize how annoyed it is since it was an abated action, but I get the message loud and clear. “How many times are we going to go through this, Jason? Your mother and I have told you time and time again that dragons are just stories. That the Wars are just fairy tales. Look outside. Look at the technology and the science that surrounds us. Do you really think all of that could come about if dragons ever walked the earth?” 

I glare at him for all I’m worth. “If dragons never existed, explain to me why so many history books cover the Draconic Wars extensively?” Well, as extensively as any history book can twelve millennia after the event occurred.

Dad throws his hands up in frustration. “Even your history teacher is telling you that the Wars never existed! What else will it take for you to believe that dragons never existed?” 

Alicia speaks up, her voice quiet. I think I can detect a hint of anger, but I could just be imagining things considering how timid she is. “I don’t mean to interrupt,” she says gently, “but I happen to agree with Jason.” At my dad’s disgusted grunt, she turns to him. “Mr. Phlanx, all I mean to say is that there is both historical and archaeological evidence that point to the fact that dragons existed sometime in the past. I don’t know much about these Wars that you are talking about, but there is at least a modicum of proof that the species existed at some point in time.” 

The look on my dad’s face has grown thoughtful at her words and I roll my eyes. Trust him to take the same words from someone he’s only just met and give them more merit than hearing the same words from his only son. He gives her a serious look, then responds almost as quietly as she did, “From what I understand, most of the archaeological evidence found that seems to support dragon life has been subsequently found to be falsified information from archaeologists looking to strike it rich.” 

I am not paying more than cursory attention to the words my dad and Alicia are exchanging now because I am too busy being blown away by the fact that this small, timid girl actually defended me towards my father. A girl so fragile that it looks like a strong gust of wind could break her in half without the right protection. But I don’t miss the last words my dad say and I notice Alicia’s hands under the table and see them clench into fists at the casual way he denies archaeological evidence. I wonder for a moment if her anger is going to aid her and thus me, if she is going to speak out against my father again. My hopes are dashed with her next words. 

“Oh, I see,” she says, and suddenly my dad’s attention is completely focused on me again. Alicia shoots me a sympathetic smile and I can’t find it in myself to be angry at her for not standing firmer against my father. 

“Jason. You will stop picking fights with your teacher. If Mr. Tyler says the Wars didn't’t happen, they didn't’t happen. You are not qualified to argue with a historian about such things.” 

I scowl. “Mr. Tyler is a history  _ teacher _ , Dad.  _ Not _ a historian.  _ He _ is not qualified to state whether something did or did not occur in the past. He doesn't’t have the proper training for that.” I have found my stubborn streak and I am not backing down, not even from my father who is glaring at me with all he is worth. I will defend the truth. I repeat that motto over and over in my head to keep the anxiety facing down my father always causes me. 

He scowls right back. “I don’t care if your teacher is qualified to draw those conclusions or not. What I care about is that my son suddenly finds it acceptable to talk back to his teachers. Disrespect for authority is not something I am going to tolerate from my children. Get your act together before it gets you in trouble with someone with more authority than your teachers. Like the law. If you end up in jail, don’t expect me to bail you out.” 

I can’t help it, I laugh at him. “What are they going to do, Dad? Throw me in jail for  _ arguing? _ For telling the  _ truth? _ Last I heard, this country was built on the freedom of speech. And I’m not breaking any  _ laws. _ All I’m doing is sticking to what I believe. Isn’t that what any real  _ man _ would do, Dad? I mean, you’ve been telling me for years that real men stick to their convictions  _ no matter what. _ And yet you tell me every day you get a chance to abandon mine the first chance I get! What kind of example are you setting here?” 

Dad flushes in anger and I smirk inwardly at the same time that I am shaking with repressed terror. I have never gone this far with our arguments before. I am almost scared that my dad is about to throw me out of the house and tell me to fend for myself, but there is a sort of knowledge in the back of my head that my parents would never do something that cruel. Not even for such a bold statement as that last one, which calls into question everything my dad has ever said to anyone in this family. 

“Convictions need to be based on reality, Jason, not on empty fairy tales,” Dad says, having somehow regained his composure. 

I flinch from that, openly. This is not the first time he has called my belief in dragons into question by referring to them as empty fairy tails, but this is the first time he has openly told me he thinks my convictions are based on lies. That I am being unrealistic. I feel anger ball itself inside my chest and I push back my chair from the table and walk away. I know this feeling well. This need for violence, for a fight... I live with the fact I have such anger inside me every day and I do my best to turn it into constructive hobbies. If I hadn't’t left that table after my dad’s comment, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have punched him before the next sentence came out of his mouth. 

Back in my room, I flop down on my bed onto my back and stare at the ceiling, lacing my hands under my head. I’m sure other people have harder lives than this, but right now I’m hard pressed to think of anyone who has to deal with more crap from their parents than myself.


	3. Chapter Three

_ -Alicia- _

 

I retire to my room after the argument at dinner, considering everything I have just witnessed. Jason, the teenager, has nearly alienated his family because of his insistence that dragons existed. Of course, I am living proof that he is right, but I am not going to tell him that. I have to maintain my human form for awhile yet, and it would be unwise of me to reveal myself to anyone, but especially to someone who would probably try to reveal me before I am ready to be revealed, simply to prove himself right. 

I feel my hands clench into fists as I think of Jeffrey's response to his son. The very denial of historical and archaeological evidence with such a brief explanation--oh they made it up in order to try to make themselves rich and famous--irks me. It irked me then, but I can't afford to alienate myself from this family the way Jason has done so thoroughly for himself. 

I lay down on the bed in the room that has been provided for me and stare at the ceiling. The room is small and compact and rather than feeling comforting, which is obviously its intended purpose, it just makes me feel caged and restrained. My freedom has been so restricted for so long that part of me wonders if I even remember how to fly. How to open my wings and spread them in the air currents. I sigh and roll onto my side. This form is even more restricting than the room itself. 

A human body is maybe a fiftieth the size of a dragon and so limited in the physical tasks it can perform. I remember the slight look of astonishment Jason gave me when I lifted Lea so easily earlier in the day. My strength surprised him, so I must look frailer in this form than I realized. I will have to be more careful about things like that from now on.

I curl up, making myself even smaller, trying to escape the tight confines of the room. On nights like this, I experience what humans call extreme claustrophobia but I can't do anything about it. I can't even tell anyone I have the issue in case someone thinks it odd. I know that I probably carry things to too much of an extreme, but considering I'm not even supposed to exist in the minds of the majority of the human population, there is no such thing as too much caution.

To be a dragon confined to a human form... there are no words that do the experience justice. It is like a bear being forced into a rabbit's den in a rabbit costume and attempting to live like the rabbits. It's a bad analogy but considering I feel like the walls are going to crush me at any moment, it's the best I can come up with. You have to wonder if a bear in that situation would forget what it was like to live freely like a bear. Of course, bears are dumb creatures so the question is moot even before it is asked. 

Feeling claustrophobic doesn't really take me by surprise. After all, I am a dragon. This body is tiny compared to my original form. And living in a house is so much more confining than living in the huge underground lairs I used to live in so, so many years ago. The truth of the matter is that I am feeling a bit homesick. I miss the Elders who kept their forms, the other members of my clan who decided there time was better spent teaching the draglets how to blend in with the harsh world around them. 

My clan, the Crystal Clan, is called that because we are the only dragons that work ice magic instead of fire. We made our home in the wilds of Antarctica long before people ever thought about sending expeditions there to explore the surface of that icy region. No one ever ventures far enough inland to find the home of the crystals. No human can survive the subzero temperatures for long. 

It is the reason we survived the Wars. My clan has served the other clans for millennia as advisors and teachers. It is the oldest dragon clan existence and was the oldest even before the Wars. The first dragon ever to be born was part of the Crystal clan and I saw her once when I was still a draglet, almost twenty thousand years ago. The life span of a dragon is so much longer than that of a human's that sometimes it makes me sad when I look at the world around me and see that there are no humans left from times before--no humans left who remember the travesty they visited upon us in their need to conquer the world. 

But conquer the world they did and future generations expanded their conquests across the globe until one day, in a way that made it seem like it happened virtually overnight, the humans were everywhere. The only safe place for a dragon who wants to fly free is in the wilds of our home country. In Antarctica, where even the humans fear to tread for the dangers subzero temperatures pose to them, a dragon can fly free. 

Ice magic is something unique to crystal dragons. Every other clan consisted entirely of fire breathers. Of course, some of the other dragons mated with the crystals and had both ice and fire draglets. The thing about magic is that a dragon is born with only one kind. There is no possible way to breed the use of both fire and ice into a newborn draglet, though there have been a few attempts made in order to fully explore the possibility of such a thing. 

The only thing all dragons have in common is that we are not vulnerable to the weather. Extreme heat and extreme cold feel the same to all of us. We are drawn to both temperatures in the extreme ranges they can reach because we are a species that lives at the height of our own powers. 

Growing up as a War Heir, the largest hurdle I had to overcome was my jealousy of the dragons who could breathe fire other than ice. Fire can be put to ready use much easier than ice and it's destructive power is vast. The Wars taught me quickly that our survival depended on the harsh reality of an ice-laden world and I find myself feeling grateful nearly every day that I was born into the clan of the crystals. 

It took the Wars to open my eyes to the usage of ice as a formidable weapon and it was that acknowledgment that pushed me from War Heir to War Leader for my clan. Once I stopped blinding myself to the potential use of everything around me as a weapon to be wielded against our enemies, I crossed the threshold between draglet and dragon. 

Because we live so much longer than humans, we have the time to fully explore our potential and come to terms with all of our abilities as well as our limitations. It takes between five thousand and seven thousand years for a dragon to reach adulthood. It takes another three thousand before they are considered mature enough to put the clan's needs ahead of their own. Perhaps in human terms it is best to say that the first five thousand years of a dragon's life is their childhood, with the next three thousand considered our version of the teenage years. 

Even as War Heir, I was allowed my eight thousand years to develop before I assumed the position of War Leader from the one before me. He was not my father, nor my brother, nor my cousin. We were not related in any way by blood except that we were both dragons of the Crystal Clan. 

A dragon's position in the clan is chosen when they have reached the midway point of their childhood--between two thousand and three thousand years. That is the time when the magic a dragon shows the most aptitude for is at its strongest, where it peaks for everyone in the clan to see. There are all types of magic and there is always a teacher for everyone. No one is excluded because all talents are useful. The very idea of an outcast in dragon society is a laughable one. Every dragon contributes to the well-being of the Clan and the Clan takes care of every single dragon born as part of it. 

I have seen a few human tribal societies that have tried to emulate this way of life and a few of them managed it moderately well. But humans always get caught up in possession of one thing or another so their attempt at clan living, as I have observed, always fails. Either they get angry over their sexual partner choosing to have relationships with another human, or they get angry about men who lead them and rebel against them. 

For dragons, the idea of monogamy is a purely human one. Why should we limit ourselves to just one partner for the rest of our lives? The shortest a dragon lives, if not killed by outside forces, is fifty thousand human years. The idea of being monogamous for that length of time is simply ridiculous. I find it to be that way even with humans, whose life spans are rarely greater than a hundred years. I actually find it more ridiculous with humans, if I am honest, because with such a short amount of time on earth, they should be allowed to explore their natures through as many avenues as possible as quickly as they can. Their lives are so rushed. 

Sometimes I wonder if that is the reason the humans who came after us in the Wars decided to wage war against us. Perhaps they grew jealous of our longevity and hoped to discover the secret of it from mutilating the corpses of the dragons they slayed. I shudder in remembered horror. Scenes from the Wars flash behind my eyes and I grit my teeth against a scream of rage. 

I saw friends killed and their bodies torn apart, ripped from limb to limb by magic so ruthless even the most hardened and battle worn amongst us had nightmares for centuries. It is one thing to kill a dragon out of sheer greed for the treasures it has hoarded in its lair and another thing entirely to kill a dragon for no reason and tear its body into so many pieces they can't be counted--can't be identified as even a solo dragon or multiple ones. There are no words to give the horror of the Wars justice today, not in the human language and not in Draconic either. 

I lay in bed until morning comes and I see the sun peak through the half-drawn curtains that frame the window at the foot of the bed. I haven't slept at all but I didn't expect to. I need less sleep than a human does. I live on a seventy-two hour cycle and when I do need to sleep, I only sleep four hours at a time. It is a sleep cycle that would kill most humans if they were to attempt to undertake it for long, but it is natural for me and the one luxury that I have always allowed myself even in the human forms I assume. To be at the mercy of humans every night for eight to nine hours...the very thought is disquieting. 

Each dragon who assumes human form works into their magic one luxury that will not be obvious to the people around them, one thing that will remind them that they are dragons to the core and not the humans whose shape they are forced to wear. Not to do this when using transformation magic is to run the risk of becoming the assumed form. I have known dragons who used transformation magic to turn themselves into different types of animals and ended up locked inside those forms because they forgot to leave themselves what we call a dragon's key. 

There may be dragons who have locked themselves inside humanity, but if there are I suspect there are few of them and that some of them have died. Once you lose your identity and become the form you've assumed, you take on every aspect of that species--and that includes the life span. Considering the way that humans treated us during the Wars, it is reasonable to assume that few dragons will have forgotten to leave themselves a key. What sane one of us would want to be locked into the form of the species that killed our brethren without mercy, without hesitation? I can think of none. 

I hear a slight knock on the door to my room and I swing myself out of my laying position and around until I am seated on the edge of the bed, feet planted firmly on the door as I wait for the person who is knocking to enter. I have learned through the years that there isn't a human alive who can resist the urge to open a closed door for very long. 

Sure enough, Terra pokes her head in and smiles when she sees me. "Oh good," she says, sounding relieved. "You're up. Mom's cooking breakfast. It'll be ready in about fifteen minutes." 

"Thanks," I say softly. What else is there to say? 

Terra nods. "No problem. Mom's pretty strict about being on time to meals and I felt I should tell you. I doubt anyone mentioned it last night." She grimaces as she mentions last night, which is no surprise. 

"Are arguments like that common?" I ask. 

"I'd love to say no, but sadly, yes." She walks into the room and sits down beside me without either my invitation or my permission. 

"Jason and your dad really don't get along, then?" 

Terra sighs. "They used to. But it's the dragon thing. Jason won't let it go and it drives Dad crazy."

I frown. "Why does he care so much what Jason thinks about dragons?" I am careful with my words here, because I can tell she sides with her father and I do not want to alienate her if I can help it. Part of me wants to throttle her for being so ridiculously stupid and allowing her father's judgment to cloud her own, but I clamp down on those feelings. My purpose here does not allow me to be sentimental. 

"I don't think it's really about the dragons," Terra says, blowing to the side to move her hair out of her face. It doesn't work, so she reaches up and moves the offending hair to the side with her fingers. 

"Then what is it about?" I ask, keeping my tone gentle and hoping I put enough curiosity in my tone to sound slightly interested but not too interested. Striking a balance with human vocal chords is incredibly difficult and it has taken me centuries to perfect the art of faking human emotions with just the right degree of emphasis on my words. 

Terra sighs and stands up and for a second I think that she is going to ignore the question. After a moment of silence, she looks at me. "Honestly? I think it's about Jason defying Dad. He doesn't really handle opposition well and Jason makes him feel like a failure as a father." 

"A failure?" I am stumped by this. How does another's behavior make one feel like a failure? It is well known to dragons that the only person responsible for success or failure is yourself. Outside influences have nothing to do with personal achievements. This is not the first time I have come across the contradictory behavior of humans and I am sure it will not be the last. But I have to admit I am at a lost to understand how it is possible to judge your own success or failure based on the actions someone else makes or how someone else thinks. 

"Yeah," Terra says, her lips twisting into a frown as she concentrates on figuring out how she is going to word whatever else she has to say to me. "It's like this," she says finally. "Dad doesn't believe that dragons ever existed or that the Wars ever happened. Most of us don't. So he sees Jason's refusal to agree with him as a personal affront because everyone else in the family agrees with him. So in his eyes, the fact that he can't get Jason to think the same way as the rest of the family means that he has failed as a father." 

I blank my face, something I have learned to do easily after a few millennia of practice. I do not want Terra to see how angry her words make me. For a father to deny his son the right to think along different lines...if this is the way all human families operate, then it is no wonder that humans are so primitive. To deny change to the point that it is nearly oppressed...the thought sickens and appalls me. "Is that why Jason sits so far away from everyone at the table?"

She winces. "You noticed that?" 

I don't get why humans ask that. If I hadn't noticed it, I would have said nothing. Plus asking someone if they noticed something is like telling them to focus on it so even if I  _ hadn't _ noticed it, the question certainly would have  _ made _ me notice.  "Yeah," I say softly.

Terra sighs and makes as if to sit back down, then stops herself midway through the motion as she glances at the clock beside my bed that reads ten til eight. "I'm not sure ten minutes is really enough to tell you anything," she says, her tone a bit apologetic. Before I can think of anything to say in response, she adds, "But there will be time for us to talk later. Mom asked me to take you shopping after church today." 

Church? I barely stop myself from asking the question out loud. I manage to turn my surprise at the mention of church into a false show of surprise at the mention of going out shopping. Monica mentioned shopping to me yesterday, so Terra saying she's taking me later isn't a surprise, but I make a snap decision to play the shy girl card as often as possible with the majority of this family. I'd rather have them think me quiet and shy because of a history of abuse that never happened than have them think me reserved due to unexpressed anger. "Shopping?" I ask, sounding as surprised as I know how. 

"Yeah," Terra says. "Mom told you yesterday, didn't she?" She glances at the clothes I'm wearing--they are the same ones from yesterday. "You have to be tired of walking around in that. Not to mention cold." 

I shrug in an imitation of self-consciousness. "I...these are the only clothes I have," I say, deliberately dropping eye contact. "The cold doesn't really bother me." Which is true, but I say it in a way that will make her feel even more sympathetic and pitying towards me. I need to wring as much sympathy and pity from her as I possibly can, because I need her to think of me as frail, weak, and completely harmless. 

She smiles at me sadly, her eyes drifting down to my sweat pants turned shorts. She frowns and the next time she speaks, her voice is hard and I have a sneaking suspicion that she may be trying to hold back tears. "The people you were with before...they didn't treat you very well, did they?" she asks. 

I blink. I hadn't expected this question this soon, but it works in my favor to answer in the affirmative despite the fact that any answer I give will be a lie. It is physically impossible for a human to abuse or mistreat a dragon, even one in human form, because we just don't look at life the same way. Human languages are the only ones who provide the words for the concept of abuse. There is no such term in my native tongue. Abuse was one human concept that it took me nearly three thousand years to fully understand. When I did, I had to retreat into Antarctica to recover from the soul shock it caused me. I sigh softly and look down at my lap as I fold my hands so that they rest on top of my legs. "I don't really..." I cut off, forcing back false tears. It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to manipulate human beings. 

Terra reaches down from where she's standing and lays a hand on my shoulder. Going along with the act I'm performing, I shift slightly to the side so that I can lean my head against her hip, letting her know that her comfort is welcome. Sometimes the absurdity and depth of the false roles I assume strike as ridiculously amusing and I have to struggle not to burst out laughing. Luckily, this is not one of those times. Trying to evoke sympathy is rather impossible to do if you are laughing full out in front of the person you are trying to make sympathetic towards you. 

"It's okay," Terra says. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." 

I nod my head against her leg, trying to tell her that I don't want to talk about it. And I really don't want to talk about it. In my mind, there is nothing to discuss and all talking to her about my supposed problems will do for me is make me feel like I'm wallowing in deceit. Which I am. I am a living lie. Still, no use to bring that fact home more than it is every time I look in the mirror. 

"We should go to the kitchen. Mom's probably done cooking." 

I nod again and let Terra pull me to my feet. She lets go of my hand after I am off the bed and walks out of the room, turning around at the doorframe to make sure I am following her. I am, of course, so her sudden halt nearly causes me to stumble. I catch myself just in time and give her a sheepish look which she returns with a small smile. 

Once we are in the kitchen, I see that we are the last to arrive. When we left my room, I looked at the clock and we still had two minutes so I am fairly confident that we are not late for breakfast. Terra does not strike me as the kind of daughter who breaks any of her parents' rules without just cause. I mean, she is an adult herself at twenty seven, and she is still living at home with them. I am not sure why this is the choice she has made, but it does seem rather common these days for adult children to live at home with their parents. 

The way humans split up into family units used to bother me a great deal because I did not understand when I first started to walk amongst humans why they did not all stay in one large communal area the way that dragons do.  Community is such a huge part of dragon life that it took nearly four thousand years for me to understand that humans just do not look at community the same way.

Humans are much more protective over their biological offspring than dragons will ever be, perhaps because we do not separate into these small family units humans are so fond of. Every dragon in the Clan is responsible for contributing to the growth of every draglet and every member of the Clan is expected to do whatever they can for the well-being of the community as a whole. 

I mentally shake off my thoughts about dragon life. Being wistful will get me nowhere. I sit down beside Monica, figuring the safest place for me to sit is the same place I sat at the previous meal. I try not to look at Jason, who is sitting at the foot of the table like he was last night. Knowing that he is being forced into alienation from his family because his father is too stubborn to allow his son to think along a different wavelength, I am finding it difficult not to feel a bit sympathetic for him. 

Sympathy towards a human is not something I come by easily, but what his father is doing is beyond ridiculous. Part of me is a bit impressed with Jason, having seen that he doesn't cave to his father despite the obvious terror he feels during their confrontations. I may not understand human emotions fully, but I can smell fear from miles away. 

And watching Jason stand before his father last night, his fear was nearly overpowering. It was the pheromones he gave off last night that prevented me from finding an appropriate response to his father's statement about falsifying archaeological evidence, but I am fairly confident that he will have assumed my inability to stand up more firmly against his father is because of the shy persona I have created. There is not a human out there who would look at the form I wear and not assume that I am a dainty female and that suits me perfectly.

Jeffrey bows his head and starts saying grace. I fake the respect to this deity that he prays to and murmur the 'Amen' along with the rest of the family when he reaches the end. I will never understand the human need for belief in some form of god, just as I will never understand many other things about them. Dragons do not worry about such trivial things as the existence or non-existence of deities. We spend our lives in pursuit of  _ living _ them, not in pursuit of trying to find assurance for a life after death. Perhaps it is a luxury we are afforded because of our long life spans, the lack of need for a deity to pray to. Humans do seem rather high strung and anxious about a great many things. It would not surprise me to learn that the reason for that is their short life expectancies. 

I shrug away those thoughts as I turn to the meal before me. Pancakes. With blueberries. I blank my expression completely, not allowing my displeasure to show at all as I mechanically began to put one piece after another in my mouth, chewing properly and swallowing the distasteful food I am having to eat. Dragons are pure carnivores and this forced diet of vegetables, fruits, and wheat does not agree with my sensitivities. Unlike the previous meal, there is no sign of any type of meat on the table and I have to swallow back my disappointment while attempting to wash down unsuitable food with the milk I have been provided. At least the milk I can stomach--it is a pure animal product, after all, and the closest thing to any type of meat I am going to have access to for awhile, if this is how all the Phlanx family meals go. I hope that there will be some type of meat later on. This vegetarian type of diet is hard on my digestive tract.

Of course, I say that simply because I cannot abide the taste of any foods other than meat. This body is purely human and will have no trouble converting the foods I am eating now into energy. It is not a difficult meal for humans to digest, so I will not actually have trouble digesting it. I am just displeased with it, because I have retained my taste for meat. In fact, I would say that my taste for meat has grown exponentially the more years I have spent confined to human form because of the sheer difficulty level that lies in obtaining it. 

Somehow, I make it through breakfast without spitting any food out of my mouth. 

Monica frowns at me, giving me a sidelong glance. "Terra, do you have any clothes that Alicia can wear to church? I don't think what she has on right now is appropriate attire."

Terra hmms thoughtfully. "I may have a dress that will fit her. But she'll have to make do with the flip-flops. I only have the one pair of dress shoes." 

Monica nods. "All right. That solves one problem." She turns to Jason. "Please behave today. I don't want to have to pull you out of any more fights." 

Jason scowls, but shrugs in a way that I guess means assent because Monica doesn't say anything else to him. 

Jeffrey is silent, but I have noticed that this human tends to be silent unless he is explaining the rules of his house to someone or yelling at his son. What goes on inside his head, I have no idea. I'm not sure I would want to know even if I could guess at what makes him tick. 

Lea is bouncing on her seat. "Is it time to go yet?" she asks excitedly, displaying the usual enthusiasm of a child who does not yet understand all of the ramifications of what it means to go to church or what it means to worship a god.

"Go get your dress on," Monica says to her.

At those words, Lea lets out a whoop of joy and runs out of the room. I can hear her opening her drawers and throwing clothes everywhere from here and I allow myself a small half-smile. 

"Jason, go put on your suit," Jeffrey says. 

I glance up, curious as to how Jason is going to react to this command. He doesn't seem like the kind of person to do what he is told easily, if last night's incident is anything to judge him by.

Jason sighs and puts his fork down, retreating from the table without a word. 

Terra tugs my arm and I find myself led to her room and thrust into a black dress almost two sizes too big. The short sleeves nearly reach my elbows and the bottom of the dress hides my flip flops completely. The neckline is the most modest dresses come with, so I don't have to worry about showing off cleavage. Terra didn't even bother to get me to undress so my clothes from yesterday are still sticking to my skin underneath the dress. She grabs a make-up kit and applies eye shadow and lipstick to me so quickly that my head spins. I don't even have time to utter a token protest before she declares me ready and pushes me out of her room and heralds me to the living room to wait as she gets ready herself. 

Before I can even consider taking a seat, the rest of the family emerge from various parts of the house. It's almost like watching ants converge into one tunnel except that I am the size of an ant myself and can't find the analogy as humorous as I would otherwise. I follow everyone outside and we pile into the car. There is no radio played on the way to the church and everyone is unnervingly silent. I want to speak but this silence seems to be what they consider reverence towards this deity they worship and I do not want to be rude to this family on the second day I spend with them. 

Luckily, the ride to the church takes only five minutes and I get out of the car as fast as I can without being conspicuous about it. Riding with so many people around me has caused a second attack of claustrophobia that is cured as soon as I step onto the grass. I grimace as I realize that I am going to have to go inside this church and be pressed against who knows how many warm bodies and endure some type of sermon about something that humans no doubt find incredibly important and vital to their day-to-day living. 

At least after church is over, I will have some one-on-one time with Terra. It is much easier to manipulate one person at a time than it is to manipulate an entire crowd of people. I will be able to extract enough sympathy from her during our shopping date later that she will never look at me as anything but broken. And I will get new clothes as well, which poses its own set of problems. I will need to pick clothes that are neither too in-fashion nor too out-of-style if I am to blend in as well as I need to. It's integral to my plan that I stand out as little as possible. 

I hear a chime sound and watch everyone flock to the doors of the church. I observe them even as I join them and note that if churches were not considered so sacred to nearly every human society on the surface of the planet, that they would be the best places to attack. Every Sunday, thousands of people gather in churches to pray, leaving themselves easy targets. Dragons do not do this, this banding together of the masses. Every dragon has their own lair, set within a complex construction of lairs that twist and turn so that every lair connects with every lair in one way or another. Labyrinth is the most accurate human word for the way our homes are built, but it lacks the ability to truly describe the immense complexity of them. 

I tense a bit as I walk inside the church and let out a sigh of relief that goes unheard when I realize that the Phlanx's are back-seaters. At least I will only have to deal with the claustrophobia induced by sitting next to my foster family, which will still be extreme but will be greatly lessened by the fact that they are not strangers and that I will not have strangers at my back. I do not like to leave my back unguarded, for it is the easiest thing for an enemy to attack. There may be no enemies here, in this church, but protecting my flank is something that is so deeply ingrained in me that I doubt I could forget it even if someone were to try to brainwash the habit out of me. 

I find myself sandwiched between Monica and Jason as we take our seats. A sidelong glance at the teenager tells me that the way our seating arrangement has worked itself out is causing him some distress. 

I already know that he finds me attractive so it strikes me as slightly strange that he is so ill at ease with being near me. Nearly all my past experiences indicate that he should be content with the current situation. 

I give a mental shrug and plaster a sweet attentive smile on my face as I turn to Monica. She has been giving me the run down on every person who walks by us and by the time we leave I have a feeling I'll be caught up on twenty years worth of this town's history.

Gossip--well, it is another human concept. All it really is in truth is a person telling someone the facts about another person while making sure to spin it in such a way to make themselves seem morally superior. I am sure that I will learn quite a bit about the other people in this town and I'm sure most of the things that Monica is telling me about these people are true. In the end, though, no matter what secrets or little dramas she reveals to me about everyone else, she is telling me everything about herself.

She is handing me the ammunition to use to manipulate her without her ever suspecting she is doing such a thing and the most amusing thing to me is that she is giving her own secrets away so carelessly, with so little regard for herself.

I have already tuned her down to a small buzz but I am still aware that part of me is taking care to memorize every single word she is saying to me. The stories are pretty average and fairly mediocre, so I can find no real reason to concentrate my entire attention on listening to them. 

I am actually trying to find something--anything--to think about that will take my mind off the fact that I am hemmed in and virtually defenseless. This is the first time I have ever attended church, always having managed to find ways to avoid it in the past, and I am finding that I  _ really _ don't like it. And that it makes me feel just as claustrophobic as I predicted it would. 

The congregation rises and I notice that Monica has fallen silent. Her tirade of gossip is over, at least for now, and I sigh silently in relief. I follow the rest of the crowd and stand up alongside everyone else, but I don't really understand what all the fuss is about.

At an invisible signal--invisible only because this is an area of humanity I am clueless about--everyone sits down again. Confused and slightly bewildered, I sit back down.

Jason leans over to me. "First time?" he asks, his voice a whisper.

"Yes," I say. "Church is new." 

"Better get used to it. Mom and Dad make us attend every Sunday and every Wednesday. If you aren't religious, I suggest you either find a way to become religious or figure out how to fake it with precision." 

"Is that what you do?" I ask, curious in spite of myself. I have to admit that human religion has never held any appeal for me, so I have never bothered to learn anything about human beliefs. Perhaps it was remiss of me. Glancing around, it is easy to see that thousands of people flock to religion for one reason or another. Perhaps I can find answers to the questions that have haunted me for so long. 

Why did humans try to wipe dragons out? What was their higher purpose in doing so? Why do so many of them seem so willing to ignore the world falling apart around them? My list of questions I would ask humans if I could ever be sure I'd get an honest answer is so long it would take me at least fourteen years to ask all of them. When you're my age, you have had plenty of time to think about things. 

Jason glances to the side, checking to make sure his parents aren't paying attention. 

They aren't. Both of them are caught up in the sermon currently being preached. Something about the sin of sloth. Laziness as a sin--what a laughable idea. Except maybe it isn't--I file that away as another question to ponder when I am less preoccupied with my feelings of claustrophobia. 

"Yes," Jason says. "I fake it well." 

I frown at him. "You don't seem like the kind of person to let anyone else tell you what you should believe or how you should act," I say, careful to keep my voice low. I don't want to attract my foster parents' attention anymore than he does. 

He lets out a quiet snort. "I'm not," he says, his expression growing serious. "I hurt my family with my insistence on staying true to history when it comes to the Draconic Era. I don't need to cause them any more suffering on top of that by telling them I don't believe in god either." 

I nod my understanding and turn to face the preacher. I don't really have a response to give. The words the preacher speaks go in one ear and out the other because all I can really concentrate on is the burning desire to get  _ out  _ of the church, to feel the grass underneath my feet and see the sky above me. I sigh. Claustrophobia sucks. Whoever invented it should be roasted. Oh wait. We're in a church. Maybe I'm not supposed to think violent thoughts here? Oh well. It's way too late for that. I'm not supposed to exist, either, so maybe the human god, if he truly exists, will overlook it. 

Besides, telling a War Leader not to think about violence is like trying to tell a kid not to think about candy. I'm sure there is a better analogy out there somewhere, but I'm not the clearest thinker when my sense of freedom and my sense of self are being assaulted from every direction. 

I just pray to god--this human one or any other that may exist--that I will be able to make it at least halfway through the sermon before I have to find a reason to excuse myself. 

Somehow, perhaps miraculously, I am able to make it through the entire sermon without running out of the building. There were definitely a few close calls and I have to admit that the only thing that kept me in my seat was the knowledge that my foster family would flip out on me if I left during a service. 

I have only been around the Phlanx's for two days and already I can tell that they are the type of people who adhere to strictly the unwritten rules governing their society. I can find no fault with them for this behavior. It is perfectly normal for the members of a society to behave in a way that is in line with the way the rest of society behaves. To consistently go against the rules of the society you live in can be devastating and unbelievably destructive and detrimental, if it is a society that has solid foundations and is well run by the governing party. 

Humanity, however, is nearly never part of a well-run society. There are a few powerful people or groups of people who profit greatly and enjoy all the benefits of reaping the rewards of everyone's hard work, while the rest are left to suffer, experiencing none of those benefits that the ones at the top receive despite generally being the ones who do the most amount of work. 

I have heard different terms for different types of governments that humans have experimented with during the last twelve thousand millennia, but I have seen that these are all just different names for the same thing. And that the problem, while acknowledged, is generally ignored or said to be solved by slapping a new name on the face of it while doing absolutely nothing to fix the problem by yanking it up at its roots and destroying it the way you keep weeds from overrunning a garden. 

The truth is a simple one and humans could easily fix it if they were not so consumed by their need to ignore the problems around them. They blind themselves to so much and part of me wonders why this ignorance exists, for their seems to be no true reason for them to indulge in the bliss that comes along with a childlike mentality towards their world. They do not see that they are the root of all of their problems; instead they look to other sources to blame. I have heard every human blame someone outside of himself for his own problems. It perturbs me greatly, for the only person ever responsible for their own woes is themselves. 

Even dragons, who have so many reasons to hate humanity that we could easily come up with thousands of reasons to completely eradicate the human race, can acknowledge that we did something to contribute to the Wars that occurred. We were careless because we did not understand that humans fear those things that are greater than themselves back during the era that the Wars happened in, so we were just as much to blame for the Wars as the humans. The only thing that I can not forgive is the complete brutality that humans used against us during those Wars. Where we struck, we struck quickly and mercifully, killing without torturing. They did not afford us the same courtesy. So I can despise humans for what they have done and still walk around in one of their skins because I know that these humans of this era are not responsible for the Wars that occurred back then. I know that my hatred is directed towards those humans of the past and I can keep myself from hating the humans of the now. 

It does not mean that I have any intention of delaying our plans. Dragons will walk the earth again and we will do it in full view of humans, in our original forms. We are sick of hiding and this planet is our home as much as it is the home of the humans. The Great Forgetting will be the next Awakening for the humans because they will be forced to realize that there are species more powerful than them in the universe. They will have to acknowledge that fact and face the fear it evokes inside them. But this time, we will be ready for that fear. We will not allow them to take us by surprise as they did during the last Wars, the War in which they thought to snuff out our existence entirely. 

But the main problem underlying human society is that it is run based entirely off of the principles of greed. To get more money, they have to make more money. To get more food, they have to produce more food. To get more of  _ anything, _ that have to make more of it. Humans are obsessed with the concept of more. So obsessed, in fact, that they have blinded themselves to the abundance of the world that surrounds them. 

Dragons are not like that. If we were, this world would have died out aeons before the humans ever walked on the surface of this planet. I am not old enough to remember the beginning of the world, but dragons were one of the earliest inhabitants. It is said that there were three or four other species of higher intelligence that were born alongside us, but the historical evidence of their existence has eroded away into nothingness. Still, there are lore keepers amongst us that tell us stories often of them, so that we may never look at this world and think that we are the owners of it or that we are the only species with the ability to think. The stories and legends keep us grounded in reality, allowing us to maintain our state of living without succumbing to the greed for possession that has overcome all of humanity.  

And that greed doesn't stop with just possession. They are also greedy about the truth-- _ they _ want to be the ones who write the history books. They want the facts to match their thoughts and beliefs about a thing, rather than adjusting their thoughts around to match the truth of something. Really, they are willing to forget history and truth much more readily than I would have believed possible if I had not seen it with my own eyes. Not even a hundred years have passed since the Holocaust occurred, an event that humans view as the worst act of war that they have ever committed against other humans or any other creature in existence. There are already historians who openly claim that the Holocaust never happened and have found evidence of some sort to support those claims. They do not care for the truth at all, these humans. They discount the survivors and the families of the survivors every time they open their mouth and say that the Holocaust never happened. I do not know how they can sleep with a clear conscience at night or how they are able to convince themselves that such ridiculous lies are true. Such an attitude towards the past does not bode well for the future.

As for the atrocities committed during the Holocaust--they pale considerably in comparison to the atrocities humanity committed against dragons during the Draconic Wars. Gas chambers, though incredibly cruel, would have been infinitely more merciful than the methods they deployed against us during the Wars. 

I grimace at the memories the thoughts invoke and come to the realization that my foster family is preparing to leave the church. Shaking my thoughts about the Wars and humanity away for the time being, I stand and follow them out into the parking lot. Being outside instantly calms the anxiety I have been feeling for the past hour and I breathe in the air, allowing myself a moment to relax. 

"We'll drop the two of you off down town," Monica says and I realize suddenly that she is talking about me and Terra and that the person she has just addressed is my older foster sister. 

"Sounds like a plan," Terra says. "You want me to get her some clothes, right?"

I say nothing. I'm not really sure I'm supposed to contribute to this conversation, but I feel fairly safe behind the mask of the shy girl persona that I have adopted. No one seems to expect much from me, for which I find myself feeling absurdly grateful.

Monica purses her lips and looks at me. I don't know what she's looking for, but if I were human I would probably feel rather self-conscious about the way she is eyeing me. "Yes. Clothes are a definite must. Those things from before aren't proper at all. It's a shame what the government is dressing kids in these days." 

I keep myself from guffawing, but just barely. The clothes I have on underneath this dress are ones I chose to wear. The workers couldn't have taken them away from me even if they'd tried. What Monica views as chill fall weather, though it's really still summer and just starting to verge towards the fall, I find almost sweltering. I come from Antarctica. Anything above subzero sixty feels like a sauna to me. Don't get me wrong, the extreme heat doesn't bother me--it actually feels sort of like taking a vacation the way humans take vacations to go to beaches. But my half-shirt and sort-of pants turned shorts are incredibly comfortable. Of course, Monica doesn't see it that way. All she sees is a thin girl who probably looks half-starved and abused, forced to wear rags as clothing because the government programs are so inept.

Monica is still eyeing me. She hmms and says, "I think she could probably use a hair cut too. What do you think, Jeff?"

Jeffrey glances over at me, flicks his eye at my hair one time, then turns his attention back to the ground in front of him. He is not much of a multi-tasker, so his concentration is fairly focused on keeping one foot in front of the other. It makes me wonder how he ever became the manager of anything as lucrative as a movie theater, but I just file it away as another thing about humans that just don't make sense to me. "A hair cut is a good idea," he says.

I sigh inwardly. My hair is long because I like it that way. I like the way it feels to run human hands through the soft layers of it. It looks like that is a pleasure this foster family is going to forbid me. If I say something about it, I have a feeling Monica will give me this incredibly disappointed look and Jeffrey will make some sort of comment about how his family needs to keep up proper public appearances. So I say nothing, because it's a small and insignificant matter. I can and will put up with a large number of inanities that I would never have put up with at any of my other foster homes because I am finally in Winston Heights. I am finally in the place I need to be in so that I will be able to set everything into motion. With the knowledge that I only have to put up with this family for three weeks, at most, I can handle any curve balls they decide to throw my way. 

"Yes," Monica says. "Clothes and a haircut." 

Terra nods. 

Jason is trailing behind us, not saying much of anything. I have a feeling this is probably normal for him, since he doesn't believe in anything we were just forced to listen to for an hour. Having to listen to two sermons every week that you don't believe in would be difficult for anyone, but considering how adamant he is about his insistence that the Draconic Wars occurred, it must be infinitely more difficult for him to sit through them without saying anything. I find myself, once again, feeling mildly impressed with this human. 

I have been impressed with other individual humans in the past--there are always a few who put the truth ahead of their own well-being and they are always impressive--but this is the first time I have met a human so young already so firmly entrenched in his convictions. I wonder if maybe his parents did him more of a good turn than they realized by ostracizing him from the family in such an obvious way. And I wonder how old he was when he first had to face the realization that his family was alienated from him. I wince a bit at the thought... to force a child to separate from his parents before that child has crossed the threshold into adulthood is so cruel that there are no words for it in my language. It is simply just not done. 

We get in the car and everyone is silent. I guess I'm going to have to get used to the silent car rides everywhere. No music, no talking...nothing to distract me from the cramped and claustrophobic feelings I get every time I am forced to sit inside one of these plastic and metal contraptions. Some humans refer to them as death traps because crashing them at high speeds is pretty much a guaranteed way to end lives. To me, they are simply a cage. I long to fly freely again, to reach speeds that no human invention can maintain for any length of time with ease. I sigh and glue my face to the window, watching the trees go by. I just want to be myself again. 


	4. Chapter Four

_ -Alicia- _

 

Shopping with Terra is time consuming. We have been through so many stores now that I can't even remember half the names that were on the doors in front of them. And I have yet to buy a single article of clothing. So far, all we have done is shop for  _ her. _ And while I have no problem with her indulging herself, I am simply tired of walking around town. 

I take a cursory glance around the shop we are in now. If I remember correctly, the name on the shop door was Simple Elegance. It is a nice name, but it is so far from the truth about any of these clothes that it is laughable. The only types of clothes in here are a few different kinds of jeans and plain shirts. These aren't the kind of clothes that make people look twice. I freeze as that thought hits me--that means these clothes are  _ perfect _ for the image I want to create for myself. 

Terra told me when we started shopping what my budget was, but with these clothes I will be able to stay far underneath it. I don't want a full wardrobe. I just want enough clothes to see me through these last few weeks of my life amongst the humans. 

I spot a pair of blue jeans I like and find them in my size. I grab two off the rack and look to see what other blue jean designs are on display. I find three more that I like and pile them into my arms. Five pairs of pants is more than enough--that many pairs of jeans will last me almost two years, let alone three weeks. Satisfied with that, I move on to the shirts. 

Looking around, I spot the shirts I want. Plain solid color tees with modest necklines that will not make Monica uncomfortable or unhappy if she sees me with them. I grab two of each color they have--red, purple, green, black, and blue--and then make my way over to where Terra is examining the purses. 

The purses here are much more extravagant than the ones I have seen at any of the other shops and it hits me that the purses is what the store is named after. They are all very fashion forward, but I am not going to carry a purse. I'd lose it the first day I used it. 

"You find some stuff you like?" Terra asks. 

I nod and indicate the pile of clothes in my arms by lifting them up for her to see. 

"Are you sure these are what you want? They're all rather simple." 

"Simple is good," I say softly. "I don't like standing out."  The line is timed perfectly. Terra's eyes go soft around the edges with sympathy and I have to keep myself from rolling my eyes. Typical human. 

"All right," she says. She hefts a purse up in her own arms. "Let's go buy this stuff and then I'll treat you to lunch. How do burgers sound?" 

My stomach rumbles audibly and I force a blush to my cheeks. "I wouldn't object," I say. 

Terra laughs. "Burgers it is." 

I follow her to the cash register and wait as the shopkeeper rings up the purchases and shoves them all into bags. The woman behind the counter isn't taking much care with the clothing and it is pretty obvious with the way she is handling herself that she doesn't care much for the job she has or for the customers in her store. I shrug mentally. I don't really care if she damages the clothes I am going to be wearing. It's just fabric, after all. 

Terra, of course, has other ideas. "Could you be a little more gentle, please?" she asks, her voice a sickly shade of sweet I haven't heard before.

I glance sharply at her in surprise, but her attention is fully focused on the other woman so she doesn't notice it. I hadn't expected Terra to be able to adopt that tone--the one that says "I'm really annoyed with you right now but I'm being so nice about it that you can't do anything about it or you'll end up looking like a complete jerk" and I file the information away for future reference. Terra seems to be a bit more complex than her mother and I wonder if maybe what I have seen of her around the rest of the family is just a show she puts on for them. It wouldn't surprise me if that turns out to be the case, considering how absurdly restrictive her parents are. 

After we have the bags in our hands, I follow her along the sidewalk for a few blocks before she leads me into a decently crowded restaurant. I am too busy thinking about the complexity of her personality to glance up to find out the name of the place we are getting ready to eat, but I do remember she promised burgers. Ah, meat. How I have missed thee.  

Whatever the name of the restaurant is, it looks to be some sort of local fast food joint. None of the sandwiches on the menu board remind me of the big name franchised restaurants, but there are a few that sound delicious. I lick my lips a bit at the thought that I am finally going to get some real food. Pancakes this morning...ugh, the very thought makes me shudder with distaste. 

Terra steps up to the register for her turn in line and orders a salad. A salad. At a fast food restaurant. I hide my disgust and step up beside her and order the triple stacker hamburger. My foster sister raises her eyebrow at the choice I have made, but I care way too much about finally getting to eat something with meat to worry over whether or not she is judging me for my taste in food. After all, I can always just say that it has been years or something since I last had a hamburger and she'd buy it hook, line, and sinker. Sometimes playing the role of a waif is a good disguise for the appetite of a dragon. 

We wait for a few minutes for the employees of the restaurant to bring our food out. Once it is up, Terra picks the tray up and leads the way to the back of the restaurant, sliding effortlessly into a booth seat. 

I sit down on the other side, hiding the relief I feel that she has chosen to sit at a booth rather than what I call a cluster table. At least at a booth I have some room to move. It's cramped enough every day having to live a human sized life and being forced into situations even some humans find uncomfortable is a thousand times more uncomfortable for me. 

Terra tears open the dressing packet that came with her salad and I hide my disgust as I watch her pour it over the lettuce. I know that humans are omnivores and eat both plants and meat, but I am a carnivore through and through. The very thought of eating a plant sends little shivers of disgust down my spine. I think, if I had to pick what I find to be the greatest hardship about living amongst humans like a human is the fact that I have to force myself to eat plants in order to keep the human form I'm sustaining healthy and alive. 

To stay in this form, I have to treat it like it is my real form except for the one or two minor luxuries I allowed when working the magic. That means I have to eat regular meals the way humans eat....and that means eating plants. I have heard so many different human nutritionists  say so many different things about the human digestive system that it is a wonder that any human ever eats properly. I don't follow the rules they set, though. I watched humans when they were still an underdeveloped species scavenging off the wilderness. There is nearly nothing a human body cannot digest, in one form or another, but I have noticed that those who eat a wide variety of things tend to live longer and seem to be considerably healthier. So I eat things I am unfamiliar with quite often, just to keep my human metabolism from being bored. 

That's every other day, though. Today, I have meat. That is pretty much the only thing that matters to me right now. This triple stacked hamburger is so juicy that my mouth is watering just looking at it. I wait for Terra to lift her fork to her mouth and take her first bite of salad before I dig into my own food with barely concealed gusto. 

I try, really I do, to take my time with the burger but the meat is hitting absolutely every single one of my senses and I end up half-wolfing it down. I am just relieved that Terra does not feel the need to comment as she watches me wolf my food while she pecks at hers. I am done with my sandwich in record time and I lean back against the booth, picking up the water I ordered to wash it down with. Soda and its ilk has never appealed to me--it's much too sweet. Water, on the other hand, is vital for every living creature on the planet, so I drink it down with relish. I love water. I know humans who claim to hate the taste of water, but they really don't understand what they're missing out on. Water is life. To drink life...well, that really should be saying enough without me going any further. 

Terra finally finishes eating her salad and sets her fork down. "You asked about Jason earlier," she says, deliberately forcing me to make eye contact with her. 

As soon as I am able, I duck my head and take my eyes off of her face. Keeping up the guise of shy girl can be tiresome, but it is a ruse that I must be ruthless about pursuing to completion. "Yeah," I say softly. "I'm just confused about why he has to sit so far away from everyone during meals." 

She frowns at me, her drink halfway to her mouth when she stops the motion to respond. "It's because he's stubborn," she says, sighing. 

"Your dad seems pretty stubborn himself," I murmur, trying to prompt her into getting to the point. Really, why do humans have to beat around the bush so much? Wouldn't it be easier just to come out and say it? 

She sighs again. "He is." There's a pause as she takes a moment to gather her thoughts. Or I assume that's what she's doing. Maybe there's another reason for the momentary pause that I'm completely unaware of. Whatever. It doesn't really matter why she's pausing, just that she is. I try not to tap my foot impatiently because I don't want her to think I'm rude. I have enough trouble having to live with humans as a dragon--I don't need the added bonus of trying to undo a mess I've created. 

"What happened?'" I ask, finally understanding that the pause means that she is waiting for me to force her to continue talking. I have to resist another urge to roll my eyes at her attempt to manipulate me and instead focus on letting her think that she is succeeding at the task. 

"We went to a Drawa Re-Enactment when Jason was ten," Terra says. 

I frown. "Drawa?" It's not a name I've heard before.

"Draconic Wars," she explains. "It's what everyone calls it now." 

I resist the urge to start yelling at her. The easy way that she talks about the Wars....that now humans are even calling them Drawa...it's enough to set my teeth on edge. Not only have they decided that dragons never existed, now the Wars they are denying aren't even called by their proper name. I find it incredibly insulting because I  _ lived _ through those Wars. They deserve to be referred to  _ as _ Wars because the acts that occurred during them would  _ never _ happen outside of war. "Oh," I say, taking a moment to get my breathing under control. I cannot afford to lose my temper here. There will be time for that later. I must remember that my purpose here is greater than this girl's disrespect. I must. 

"Anyway," Terra is saying when I finally manage to calm myself to the point that I can listen to her  _ without _ wanting to tear her throat out. "We all went to the Drawa Re-enactment when Jason was ten because Dad's boss at the time was really into all the dragon lore and invited us along. Dad couldn't really say no because he was afraid that if he did he would be passed over for promotion at the theater so we all ended up at the Re-enactment back then." 

I try not to flinch at the casually dismissive attitude she has towards the Wars and dragons and everything else that my entire  _ life _ consists of and force myself to focus, instead, on what happened with Jason. I already know that my curiosity for this human reaches deeper than my curiosity towards most other humans, so it isn't as difficult a task as it might have been otherwise. "So what happened then?" I ask, careful to strike a balance between sounding eager and sounding like I'm trying not to intrude. 

Terra half-grimaces. "Well, Jason was finding all of it really cool and even joking around with the people in the dragon outfits. Then he heard someone yell something about dragons being stupid and he went to defend them and the kid who screamed the first thing said that if dragons were so smart, they would still exist. And that caused Jason to burst out crying and he turned to Mom and told her that dragons had to exist because they were awesome." 

"It sounds like something a child would do," I say, because it  _ does. _

She nods. "Yeah, that's what we all thought it would turn out to be in the end. Mom picked him up and told him that it was all right and that he should go play with the dragons again and ignore the other little boy."  She looks up at me and I can tell that whatever she says next, she is going to be looking for my reaction and is going to judge me according to the words I say and the expression I make. "Jason made Mom put him down and he turned and screamed at her that he didn't want to play with the people who were pretending to be dragons especially if people were the reason that dragons didn't exist anymore in the first place." 

"Wow," I say, stunned. I don't have to fake it, either. I really  _ am _ stunned. Granted, Terra probably thinks I'm stunned by the sheer audacity of the kid that Jason was then, but the truth is that I am quite simply awed that a child at that age could make a decision so adult-like and stick to it.

"Yeah," Terra said. "Ever since then, things have been kind of difficult for him with the rest of the family." 

"He seems to get along pretty well with Lea," I say neutrally.

She glances at me sharply, to see if I am hinting at anything. I am, of course, but she doesn't detect it. I'm not that much of an amateur. "Yeah, the two of them get along great. They just aren't allowed to talk about dragons with each other, at all, ever, for any reason." 

"And Jason just goes along with that?" 

Terra shrugs. "I don't know if he would if he was allowed to be left alone with her. My parents won't let him baby sit her without someone there to keep an eye on him. So really it's like babysitting both of them."

"They really trust him so little?" I ask, unable to mask the shock I feel at the idea. 

"No, they don't. And it is a bit sad that it has come to that. But it's the simple truth that Jason is desperate for  _ anyone _ to believe him, because no one does. And he doesn't care who he hurts or affects with his words." 

_ I think he cares more than he lets on, _ I almost say, but catch myself just in time. Terra isn't going to know that Jason fakes a belief in god for his family's sake and it would be rude of me to expose that for him. "What happened after you got home from the Re-enactment?" I ask. 

Terra looks startled for a moment. I guess she thought we were done talking about it, but I still have a few unanswered questions. "Oh, well, no one really thought much of it after the public outburst. We all ate dinner together like usual and everyone went to bed and everything seemed to return to normal."

"But then something happened?" I ask. Of course it did. Why did I ask such a stupid, obvious question? Oh yeah. Because I'm pretending to be human. They do this obvious question thing all the time. 

"Yeah," Terra says. "The next day, in fact." At my questioning look, she continues, "Jason went to school the next day and Morris, the guy he is always getting into fights with now, started talking to his friends about how he wanted to go kill all the snakes in the world the same way that dragons were killed. That made Jason really angry so he tackled Morris---realize these were both ten year old boys--and the two of them fought for about twenty minutes before someone decided it would be a good idea to get a teacher to break them up." 

I hide a wince at the words Morris said to Jason....when you have lived through the horrors of those Wars, the idea of someone joking about doing the same to any other living creature is unthinkable. It is beyond the level even Holocaust abhorrers can understand because there is nothing in human history that outweighs the atrocities they committed against us. "Was Jason hurt?" I ask. Another obvious question. I think I'm starting to get this sounding obvious thing down. It's only taken me four centuries, but hey, things that are worth doing tend to take a bit of practice first, right? 

"Yeah," Terra says. "He came home with two black eyes, a split lip and a ton of bruises on his arms and legs. Mom and Dad really freaked out about it at first because Jason had  _ never _ been in a fight with anyone before then and they automatically assumed that the other kid was the one who started the fight." 

"Ah," I say, a piece of the puzzle slotting into place for me. 

"They weren't too thrilled, to say the least, when they found out that Jason was the instigator of the entire thing. Then when Dad tried to talk to him about, tried to show him that it wasn't right to start fights with other kids about the Wars, he clammed up tight. Dad told him that he was acting like a child for clinging to his belief that dragons existed once and I remember Jason stood up then and yelled in Dad's face,  _ "I don't believe they existed then! I believe they still exist now! Dragons are way too smart to ever have been wiped out by people! People are stupid. And you're stupid for refusing to see the truth!" _  And that was when Dad told him that until he stopped believing in fake history that he wasn't allowed to sit any closer to the family during meals than at the foot of the table." 

My jaw has dropped open with surprise; I'm sure it looks like shock at the audacity of the younger Jason's behavior, but it isn't. I have met and even lived alongside humans that studied the Draconic Wars in-depth. And never, in my entire life, have I heard a human who did not live during the Wars say that they had even a smattering of belief that dragons might still exist. And this human teenager, this kid I haven't even really talked to, stood up to his father when he was  _ ten years old _ and yelled that we  _ had _ to exist and he had never even  _ seen _ more than a picture of us in a book! If that isn't worth being shocked over, then I can think of nothing that is. 

That pretty much ends the conversation and we leave the restaurant behind us. We make a quick stop and I get my hair cut, doing my best not to openly complain about losing so much of it, and then catch a bus back to the house and make it just in time to eat supper. Afterwards, I take my new clothes into my room and hang them up in the closet before I collapse on the bed. Tomorrow is going to be a whole different type of ball game. Tomorrow, I have to do the one thing all human teenagers dread and that I dread as well, but for entirely different reasons. I have to go to high school. 


	5. Chapter Five

_ -Jason- _

 

The worst thing about church is how incredibly boring it is. Sitting through hour long lectures on the various sins we commit is worse than sitting through my classes at school. But at least at school I know I'm going to walk away having learned  _ something _ valuable. Not a lot, necessarily, but  _ something. _

All I get out of church is boredom. I try not to squirm so much that I call attention to myself. The last thing I need is for my parents to see me acting up in church. Well, that's what they'd call it. I deal with enough grief with them on a daily basis without adding more to it. 

I can tell Alicia is struggling with the church thing as much as I am. Her discomfort is pretty obvious, what with the way she keeps picking at her dress. Her disinterest being this noticeable is bad, especially if my parents notice it. I don't want her to get in trouble with my family this early on. So I lean over to her. "First time?" I ask. 

"Yes," she says. "Church is new."

"Better get used to it. Mom and Dad make us attend every Sunday and every Wednesday. If you aren't religious, I suggest you either find a way to become religious or figure out how to fake it with precision."

"Is that what you do?" 

I'm silent for a moment, not quite sure how to respond. I don't know if she believes in God or not. Not all religious people attend church, after all. I decide to throw caution to the wind. "Yes," I say. "I fake it well." If she judges me for it, so be it. It's not like I'm not used to being judged. 

"You don't seem like the kind of person to let anyone else tell you what you should believe or how you should act." 

I snort in derision. "I'm not," I say. But there's only so much I can put my family through. The thought sobers me. "I hurt my family with my insistence on staying true to history when it comes to the Draconic Era. I don't need to cause them any more suffering on top of that by telling them I don't believe in God either." 

She falls silent after that. 

I wonder if I have offended her, but it's a passing thought. If I had offended her, surely she would have said something back to me. Then again, this girl is rather inverted. At least, that's the feeling I get off of her. 

I try to tune back into the sermon, but I was only ever half listening to begin with. Father Richards is talking about sloth and how laziness infects us without us even realizing it. It all sounds like common sense, up until he starts telling us what God expects from everyone and how we need to adhere to the Ten Commandments the way a drowning man clings to a life preserver. I roll my eyes. It's all nonsense. If the great and loving and ever merciful God was really so great and loving and merciful, dragons would still be around.

I still remember the devastation I felt when I learned that dragons no longer walked the planet. I still feel that same sadness to this day. There is so much that dragons could have taught us, if only the humans of the past hadn't given into their fear and their greed. There's a small, secret hope, inside me that maybe somewhere some small community of dragons did survive, but it is minuscule. My dad may never convince me that I should ignore history the way he wants me to, but I have to admit that it seems he was right about the existence of the species as a whole. The dragons really were wiped out. And what a tragedy that is. 

The sermon ends and I sigh silently in relief. I just want to get out of the church before Morris manages to find me in the throng of people. Every Sunday and Wednesday I curse the fact that our parents attend the same church, so I am forced to endure his presence not only all week during school but also on the day my family tells me is meant to be sacred. While the fights Morris and I get into at school are infamous, we don't fight at church. 

We made that mistake one time, when we were both thirteen. It wasn't a mistake we made twice. I don't think either one of us could sit properly for a week or two after our parents got done with us. We declared a sort of semi truce for church. We don't fight at church, but Morris has this weird obsession with trying to provoke me into fighting him whenever he sees me at church. I don't know what the point of making me fight him is, unless what he is doing is seeing how much trouble he can get me into with my parents. I think the guy must derive some sort of sick pleasure out of the knowledge that he can drive the wedge that much deeper between me and my parents every time he provokes me into hitting him. 

I make it into the parking lot without seeing him, following my family at a decent distance. My mom and Terra are talking about buying clothes for Alicia and getting her a hair cut. Gross. Girl talk. Once we're at the car, I make an excuse that sounds flimsy even to my own ears and walk away before giving my parents a chance to even think about responding. I just want to get away from them for awhile. 

It's been a week since I last went by Traps, the local bookstore, so I head off in that direction, turning left when I get to the end of the block. It takes me twenty minutes to get to the shop and I notice that when I enter it, I'm the only person aside from Myth who is in the store. 

"Hey, Jason," Myth says, entire face lighting up when he catches sight of me. 

"Hey, Myth. How are you?" I ask. Myth is the owner of the store and the only adult who has ever treated me  _ like _ an adult, instead of a kid refusing to grow up.

"Good, good. I got some new books in that you might be interested in." He reaches down below the counter and brings up two thick volumes. "Wasn't sure when you'd be by, but I've been holding onto these for you." 

I reach out and run a hand reverently across the cover of the first book. It's a book I have been anticipating the release of for quite some time. The name of it is  _ Dragon Social Life _ and it is said to be one of the most accurate books of its kind. According to the reviews, everything was meticulously researched--to the point that if there was even a hint of doubt about something, the authors stated that up front and followed that statement with what they admitted to being pure speculation.

The only problem is that I don't have money. My parents don't give me an allowance anymore. Not since they found out that I'd been buying books like this one and hiding them. And they didn't find out because I'm bad at hiding things. No, they found out because there are only so many books you can buy before you simply run out of hiding places. I had to start displaying the books openly on my bookshelves because I didn't have a choice. And once my parents saw that, they flipped out and took away my allowance. Yet another privilege denied me simply because I am more interested in the truth than keeping myself in my family's good graces. 

"I can't afford it," I say. 

Myth nods, his eyes serious. "I know." He indicates the couch under the window that customers use to read books they've purchased when they're waiting on a ride or to meet someone. The bookstore is in a really convenient location and a lot of people use it as a meet up point, though generally they meet up outside the store rather than inside its walls. "You can't take them outside the shop with you since you can't buy them, but you can read them here if you'd like." 

I'm flabbergasted. Myth doesn't let any of his customers read books they haven't bought. "I don't know what to say." 

Myth shrugs. "Nothing to say. You're the only one who comes in here for these books. I don't get to talk to anyone else about this stuff. I see the way everyone in this town treats you, Jason. It's not right." 

"I didn't know you were interested in this kind of thing too," I say, deliberately ignoring the comment about the rest of the town. I don't really want to talk about the way this town has let me down over the years. 

"Yeah," Myth says. "You wouldn't know. I don't talk about it much because it's bad for business, the way things are these days." 

"Yeah," I say, echoing him. "People are idiots." 

He snorts. "Ain't that the truth." 

I pick up the first book, then glance at the title of the one beneath it. "How did you get a copy of this?" I ask, picking it up. "I thought they were only making this book available to a very select group of clientele?" The title on the books spine reads  _ The Complete History of the Draconic Era _ . 

"I'm a member of that very select group of people. Mind that you don't mess up the dust cover when you read it." 

I nod dumbly. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would get a chance to read this book. It was only released last month, after being in the process of publication for nearly fifteen years. So many complications occurred that it was thought for about a year that the project had been scrapped. It is incredible to be standing here with the book in my head. 

Myth chuckles at me. "Go read the book, Jason. I'll let you know when I'm closing the store." 

Since Traps is local, Myth can close the store whenever he likes. He generally closes before five, so I'll have plenty of time to get home for supper. God forbid I be late for dinner because I was reading. I think my parents would prevent me from coming to Traps if they knew how often I came here or if they had any idea that Myth treats me so well when it's just the two of us alone in the shop.

When other people are around, we basically don't acknowledge each other. He told me a long time ago that it wouldn't be wise for us to be seen being too friendly with each other, because people in this town have a habit of gossiping and he didn't want to cause me or my family any trouble. I manage to come by at least once a week at a time when he's the only person in the store, so we keep in pretty steady contact and talk about pretty much everything. If I had to say anyone could qualify as my mentor, Myth would be the person I'd say filled that role. 

I take a seat on the couch Myth indicated, running a hand reverently along the spine of  _ The Complete History of the Draconic Era. _  I set it down beside me, careful that it doesn't fall into the cushions and that it's far enough away that when I shift position, there'll be no danger of me accidentally sitting on it. 

The other book is the one that holds the most interest for me right now. It's the first of its kind. No one else has dared to broach the subject of dragon social life since the Wars ended. I don't know what kept people from exploring it, considering how curious humanity is as a whole. The saying about cats should really be rewritten with humans in the subject line. 

But dragon social life...I find myself eager to crack open the book. How did dragons live back then? What separated them form us, aside from the massive size difference? I wonder if our thinking styles were in any way compatible or if the very incompatibility of the styles was the reason the Wars happened in the first place. 

Tucking my knees underneath me, I sprawl a bit to the side and open the book. With trembling fingers, I turn to the first page. This is it. This is the moment I've been waiting for my whole life. Now is when I discover the secrets behind the legend that the dragons left as their legacy. I take a deep breath, collecting myself. It's now or never. I drop my eyes to the page where the text begins and start to read. 

_ Dragon culture is a difficult thing to study. Historians all over the world are arguing about whether or not the Draconic Wars should still be taught in the schools. Parents object to the Wars being taught about the Wars because they don't want their kids being taught fairy tales. These are the same people who argue that Creationism is viable and factual, failing to see the irony of their hypocrisy.  _

_ Despite these difficults, there is a small group of historians and archaeologists dedicated to keeping history pure. This book has been in the making for nearly thirty years, due to budget cuts and other setbacks caused by those determined to see the truth falsified. But we were finally able to get the material out in the world for everyone to see.  _

_ And the first thing we want to say is this: Dragons were real.  _

_ There is incontrovertible evidence supporting the fact that dragons did, indeed, walk the earth. Bones that could only belong to the draconic race have been all across the contient. Some archaeologists discredit the finds where they can because dragons have become boogeymen. To them, dragons are the stuff of nightmares, used to scare children into obedience.  _

_ On the other hand, we believe that dragons may have been the only chance humans ever had at interspecies relations and that the chance was destroyed twelve millenia ago by human hands.  There is no evidence to support or even suggest this, but it is an area of research that is strongly pursued in hopes of uncovering such evidence.  _

_ Studying the social patterns of dragons has required a lot of time and infinite patience. This book is the first of its kind and the thirty years it took does not emphasis the lengthy time of the research included in its pages. Records dating back nearly three thousand years have been kept, each passed down from one generation to the next generation. That said, nearly everything in this book is pure speculation. There are no historical anecdotes telling us how the dragons behaved as a society. There is no archaelogical evidence showing that they existed as either a tribal community or independently of one another. The bones found are incredibly old and very brittle and only a handful of bones have ever been found. Considering twelve millenia have passed since the Wars, this is not surprising. Not having a single skeleton to work with does make it rather difficult to more than speculate.  _

_ But even though this book is based off pure speculation, we are fairly confident that it accurately reflects dragon society. Gleaning the information from the few archaelogical sources available to us has not been an easy task, but we hope to have done it justice.  _

I stop reading as I reach the end of the introduction and have to resist the urge to throw the book across the store. All speculation? Yet they're fairly confident that it accurately reflects dragon society? What complete bullshit. It isn't possible to even be remotely accurate about something when all you have to go off of is pure speculation. Yet these guys claim a fairly high level of accuracy over it. Snorting in disgust, I shove the book away from me so that it ends up on the other side of the couch, being careful not to damage it since I can't afford it. Part of me wishes I had the money  _ to _ buy it just to be able to rip out all the pages and scatter them to the wind. I don't have the money, though. I'm glad, too. I get enough weird looks from the people in this town already. I don't need to give them anymore reasons to think I'm crazy than they already have. 

I look at the other book and sigh.  _ Dragon Social Life _ turning out to be such a complete flop has completely put me off reading for the day. I stand, gathering the two books in my arms, and meander over to the register. Myth is in the back with a customer; I can hear him talking from here. They're discussing some type of true crime novel. Whatever. I'm not here to eavesdrop. I put the two books on the opposite side of the counter, making sure to take extra care. The last thing I need is Myth miffed at me for creasing or bending one of his new books. 

The clock reads five past noon. I groan. I still have an entire day left. Not having friends or any sort of social life aside from church gatherings makes for an incredibly boring weekend. I could go see a movie. I could go to the library. I could go the arcade. None of them sound like any fun. Everything except the library would be better to do with a friend. I scowl as I walk down the street, stopping ever so often to kick the pebble I picked up outside of Traps and watch it roll a few inches in front of me before it stops. I have nothing better to do than kick rocks. I might as well go home. 

The only problem with going home is that my parents and Lea are the only ones who are going to be there. Which is fine, except that every chance my dad has to get me alone he takes. And it means fighting. We can't avoid it. Or at least he can't avoid yelling at me. Even when I retreat into my room, half the time he follows me to yell at me for one thing or another I've done wrong. According to him, I have to stop getting into fights with Morris--the guy is always the one that starts them, considering he is always the first person to open his mouth and start taunting me. I also have to respect authority and that means not talking back to teachers who don't even know their subject well enough to qualify as experts of the subject, let alone teachers of it. 

On top of that, I have to go to church. Every Wednesday. Every Sunday. I have to sit through sermons talking about every sin under the sun and if I don't memorize the lectures, my father will yell at me for not taking my religion seriously. I do take it seriously--my lack of belief, that is. I seriously don't believe in his god or the sermons or following the supposed ten commandments to the letter of the law. I just want to be myself, but that's not good enough for my dad. No. He'd rather I be someone like Terra, who never argues with him about anything even if she disagress with him. I have watched her go behind his back numerous times after he has told her that he expressly dislikes it when someone does something  _ and she has agreed with him _ and do the exact things she has told him that they both dislike. 

I don't know if my mom is the same way. My older sister is a hypocrite. A liar. And she is content being like that, which is something that I just can't wrap my mind around. What joy is there in lying? The only advantage it offers is the comfort of knowing that you don't have to stand up for your ideals or beliefs; that everyone can just ride roughshod over you whenever you want and you just stand there with a smile and take it. It's no wonder people go crazy--hypocrisy is insane. The more you try to pretend you are something you're not, the more miserable you become. That's what I have seen happen to everyone around me. 

Even Terra, who seems happy, only seems happy around the rest of the family. In truth, she is absolutely miserable. I have walked past her room at night and heard her sobbing into her pillow. Maybe the brotherly thing for me to do in that situation would have been to walk inside and comfort her, but I figured if she was crying in the middle of a night and  _ trying _ to muffle it so that no one else could hear--well, that was her business. If she didn't want anyone else to know, then who was I to push her on it? 

And poor Lea. She only has two years left before our parents are going to make her discard every single toy she's ever loved. Every picture book, every stuffed animal, every poster on her wall. They will take her shopping for "big girl clothes," and she will have to be a big girl. Or they will ostracize her the way they forced me to alienate myself. They aren't going to take any chances that another one of their children turns into a person like me. A truth seeker. That's what I consider myself. All my parents see when they look it me is a troublemaker. I see the disappointment in their eyes every time I look at them or they look at me. It's not fair, but I've learned that life seldom works out that way. 

The worst thing about it, the alienation from my family, is that I have absolutely no one to talk to. I can't share my problems with anyone. Okay, so I can mention one or two things to Myth when he's not busy with customers, but that's not the way real friendship works. There's not a single person in this town who would be willing to stand beside me in public. Everyone is too afraid their own precious reputations will be ruined if they do that. The worst part is, though, that I can't even really blame them for that. 

I can't ask someone else to become an outsider just because I'm tired of being lonely. If I wanted friends, all I'd have to do is start telling the world that they've won. That dragons didn't exist, that the Wars never happened. And I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered going that route once or twice...well, to be accurate, more than a few times. But one thing has always stopped me and it has always been the same thing: I cannot lie to the people I love. 

And I wouldn't want to lie. I'd rather have them treat me as a leper than embrace me as a fraud. Kicking the pebble loses its appeal. I've been walking for hours, working myself into such a resentful mindset that I didn't notice when I passed the welcome sign to Winston Heights. The town is small enough itself, but once you get outside of the town, you really are in the miiddle of nowhere. The only thing I can see from where I'm standing is a gas station up on the hill across from me. I've been known to walk this far before when I get mad, but I've never gone into that gas station. It's creepy. 

The building itself is incredibly run-down, but the gas pumps are still working just fine. The only people that ever stop at it are the few families that live behind it in the Shuntz Trailer Park. I think they're probably the only ones brave enough to even open the door. I've heard so many horror stories about that place that it's not even close to being funny.

Even as a kid, the place terrified me. Every time we drove past it, I'd squeeze myself into the smallest ball I could manage and try to cling to the door furthest away from it in the backset for dear life. I was terrified that something alien was going to come out of the shop and attack the town, killing everyone while they slept. 

The fact that my parents claimed to be friends with the owners didn't help matters much. I thought they were going to feed me to the creatures who lived inside for the longest time. That fear grew even more pronounced when I realized that they were starting to consider me a disappointment. I thought it was only a matter of time before they decided to get rid of me for good. Terra was the one who put an end to that fear for me. I had a nightmare one night about that old run down gas station and when she got to my room, I poured out everything. I told her how I was afraid that Mom and Dad were going to take me there one day and just dump me off and leave me for the creatures there to eat because they hated me so much. That was the night Terra told me that our parents didn't hate me. The thing they hated was dragons. She told me that if I could just let go of my belief in them, everything would go back to normal and I wouldn't have to have such crazy nigthmares. She also reassured me that no matter how angry our parents got with me, they'd never abandon me. They had at least that much honor.

Still, the sight of this gas station sends a chill down my spine. The solitary light in front of the door is turned on, as it always is, but the rest of the station is pitch black. I shiver in spite of the heat and turn on my heel, trying not to draw attention to myself with how quickly I pick up the pace. 

When I was thirteen, some kids from school thought it would be funny if they brought me out here to this gas station and made me walk up to the entrance. Morris was the ringleader of that little group and the same people who were his cronies back then are his cronies to this day. It was the one and only time he ever made the mistake of using his friends to gang up on me with. I lost the fight, hands down. Of course I did. Four against one isn't exactly even odds, after all, and I was a pretty lanky guy even back then. 

Morris got his older brother, who was the biggest bully in the school before him--I swear, that family must pride itself on bullying, since every single person who has been considered the biggest bully in the school has been a person with their surname--to pick all of us up and drive us out to the bottom of the hill where the gas station sits.  

I was scared of my mind before they loaded me into the car--I thought they were going to kill me. I was really, truly convinced that I had lived to see my last day. I don't even remember everything I said to them, but I do remember begging for my life. Loudly. Every chance I got to say something, I took it to plead with them to let me go. That only lasted until Morris got the bright idea that gagging me would shut me up. 

Being gagged and surrounded my kids you know hate your guts is a terrifying experience at any age, but thirteen is probably the worst. If it had happened when I was younger that that--eight or nine even--the idea that they might be taking me off to some remote location where they would kill me and bury my body would never have occurred to me. If I had been the age I am now, I would still be terrified. But I'd be smart enough to look for escape routes at every possible opportunity instead of being blinded by my terror. And I sure as hell wouldn't beg Morris to spare my life. 

I scowl as I maintain my quick pace going away from the gas station. The memory of that awful day is making me want to burst into a sprint, but there are people on both sidewalks now. I'm not alone. And I hate that I'm so afraid of that building, hate that the people inside of it can strike such terror into my heart. It makes me feel like a despicable human being because the people who live there have never done anything wrong. I hate them and I have never met them. I've never even seen their faces and I loathe them so absolutely that if I were to find out their identities, I'm not sure if I would flee in the opposite direction as fast as I possibly could or if I would find the nearest weapon I could and turn and blow them away. I hate that about myself. I hate knowing that I don't know what decision I'd make in that situation. I hate the fact that I hate someone without just cause, for no discernible reason. 

It makes me feel the way the humans who wiped out the Dragons all those years ago must have felt. Terrified into being vindicative and cruel because they couldn't see any other path before them. Their fear blinded them into hatred, the way mine has blinded me into the hatred I harbor for the people at that station. 

A mile away from the station, I feel my heart begin to slow down. The anxiety turns to thoughtfulness as I consider the night Morris and his cronies decided the best way to teach me a lesson was to drag me out to that run down gas station. I'll never forget that day, not for the rest of my life. 

After Morris gagged me, I struggled against the four kids holding me down as hard as I could. I punched and kicked and clawed and scratched, whirlwinding with violence due to complete panic. It took all four of them at once to pin me down before Morris decided the next course of action he should take was to tie me up. He bound my hands behind my back, tying my feet together as well. Before I could even think about kicking out with both legs, the four cronies flipped me over on my stomach and bent my legs back harshly, hogtying my feet and arms together. That was the moment I remember thinking that I really was heading for death. That Morris really did want to kill me. The only thing I could do then was cry. And I cried long and hard, unable to scream or cry for help or even fight off my attackers. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at rope without remembering that day for the rest of my life. 

When we got to the bottom of the hill the gas station sits on, they tumbled me out of the car, laughing when I landed flat on my face. I was completely helpless against them and instead of being merciful, they took the time to bully and humiliate me further. All they cared about was making me suffer. After all, to them I was just the freak that believed in dragons; the guy that everyone at school avoided like the plague because people thought I had some sort of disease. Like my childish refusal to grow up and lie like everyone else was contagious and I had to be put down. I'd heard the rumors often enough. It seemed like Morris had decided to take it upon himself to be the one to administer the tranquilizer.

They took ten minutes taking turns hitting, kicking, and punching me--generally inflicting as much damage as they could. It was the worst beating of my life. I thought that was how I was going to die--being beaten to death at thirteen. The place we were at was completely deserted--it always is. No one likes coming near this gas station, as far as I can tell, if they aren't part of the trailer park situated behind the store. I have never been in that trailer park, either, but I don't know if it has the same aura about it as the gas station. If I had to guess, I would say it doesn't simply because I have never felt something so purely  _ evil _ from anything else aside from that building.  

After they beat me up to their satisfaction, Morris tugged me to my feet by my hair. Still gagged, I couldn't even scream from the pain of it. His older brother had left with the car almost as soon as we arrived; there was probably a limit to how willing he was to get involved with his brother's plans for murder. I was embittered towards Morris' brother more than I hated any other person that was there with me. As an adult he should have taken responsibility, should have stopped the entire thing from happening in the first place. Instead, he enabled his brother in his cruelty. It took me a long time to come to terms with the level of casual cruelty he had inadverently inflicted on me that day; longer to understand his motives than to understand the motives of the rest. 

Morris forced me to look at the gas station. He knew I was afraid of it. Everyone knew. It wasn't a secret. Most of the other kids in our class were scared of it, too. It wasn't a big deal. And I knew Morris was one of those that it terrified the most. Yet here he was, shoving my head up so that I could get a clearer view of the building we both despised. 

"I'm going to untie you," he said. "And then I'm going to count to ten. You have until I get to ten to run up the hill to that gas station and touch its wall. If you can't do that," he said, pausing for a significant length of time to indicate his cronies with a nod of his head towards each of them, "then I'm going to let them do what they wanted to do." He reached out and pulled the gag out of my mouth.

I spat on the ground a few times, my jaws aching both from the gag and the various kicks, slaps, and punches I had received earlier. "And what did they want to do?" I asked, my voice coming out as nothing more than a hoarse croak. 

"Beat you to death." 

I flinched. I'd already begged Morris not to kill me. There was nothing more humiliating I could do than that. "Ten seconds isn't enough to get up that hill," I said. 

Morris looked at me like I was an idiot. "I said when  _ I _ got to a ten count, not after ten seconds have passed. Are you that dense?" He reached down and untied the ropes around my wrists and ankles, causing me to cry out in pain as my knees scrapped the ground. Morris was still holding me up by my hair. He let go. 

I collapsed to the ground and took a wheezing breath of air. I ached all over but I could barely feel certain parts of my body because they hurt so much they'd already gone numb. I wobbled to my feet and glanced fearfully at the gas station.

"Don't even think about running the other direction," Morris said. "My brother's waiting to catch you with the car if you do that." 

"When you say catch, you mean?"

"I mean hit you with it. You have three choices here, Jas. You can choose to do what I told you to do and go up to that gas station and put a hand against the wall. You can stay here and let my friends beat you into a bloody pulp--and I mean that literally. Or you can run away from me and my friends and away from the gas station and straight into the fender of my brother's car. It's your choice." 

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I was terrified of that gas station. No one knew what happened inside those walls. "You go first," I said. 

Morris guffawed. "I'm never putting a single foot on that property. I'm not that stupid."

"And I am?" 

He raised an eyebrow. "You tell me." 

I sighed and sat down hard on the grass. 

"One." 

I gave him a hard look. He was counting already? I wondered how much time would pass between each one of his counts. I still had until he got to ten and he'd already said they weren't going to be one second intervals. If they were even as small as ten second intervals, I'd be able to get up that hill. I wasn't worried about speed. I was the fastest runner in my middle school. What I was worried about was having to touch the wall of that building. There was no telling what might happen to me. 

For all I knew, I'd touch the side of the building and be sucked into some weird parallel universe. Or beamed into outerspace. Or sucked into the belly of some sort of gigantic monster and I'd slowly be absorbed, eaten away by acid. There were a million and one possible things that could happen to me, but there was nothing certain one way or the other. 

"Two." 

I frowned. Thirty second intervals. I looked around me. My bully's friends stood in a tight line, shoulder to shoulder, all staring at me. Waiting for me to come to them. I shuddered. That wasn't an option. I hurt enough as it was. I looked at the other two ways that lay before me besides running up to the gas station. There were two clear paths to the road. But no matter which direction I ran, Morris was right. His brother would catch up to me with his car in no time. I was doomed if I went in either direction. 

"Three." 

I sighed and stood up, tenderfooting my way to the beginning of the sloped driveway. I stared at the building, willing it to disappear, to simply fade into nonexistence. 

"Four." 

The intervals were getting shorter. Morris was getting impatient. If I didn't start really moving soon, he could cheat. That thought panicked me into a sprint. I had almost forgotten the most important rules for bullies: don't fight fair. The next word out of his mouth might be ten and I would be condemned to being beaten to death. I didn't want that. I didn't want my parents to have to live through that. I especially didn't want my four year old sister to learn about death so early in her life. I couldn't leave my sister unprotected. Not for any reason. Not even my own fear. 

My pace increased as her face filled my thoughts, memories of her early days rushing through my mind in a jumble. I raced up the hill, the wind pushing against me the entire way. My bones cried out for mercy; they ached from the beating they'd already received. And here I was asking them to do something this difficult not even twenty minutes afterwards. I silently apologized to my body and ran. 

From down the hill, I heard Morris speak. "Seven," he said.

I didn't know if he'd skipped any numbers but it was the first one I'd heard him say since four. The wind was really strong, though, so it was possible he'd counting the other numbers before saying seven. It didn't really matter. The only thing that mattered was that the wall of the gas station was looming in front of me. It was barely five feet away from me. 

The entire building was screaming a warning at me, yelling at me to get away from it. I wanted nothing more than to obey, to get the hell away from it, but my life was on the line. And with it, my sister's entire childhood. I couldn't risk that, not for anything. Not even to protect myself from whatever evil this gas station masked. 

"Nine!" Morris yelled.

Throwing all caution to the wind, I threw myself against the wall. As soon as my hands touched the surface, I screamed and scrambled back. Pain the likes that I'd never felt before coursed through me and I huddled on the ground in front of the building, curled in the fetal position, thumb in my mouth. The pain slowly receded, achingly so, and I managed to climb to my feet. 

Coming away from that wall gave me a different resolve. The pain that had coursed through me hadn't been human. Not even remotely. But I didn't know what it was. I just knew it was wrong. Whatever had caused that kind of suffering was wrong. And the type of pain that Morris and his gang had inflicted on me was wrong. 

I stood up and walked back down the hill to where Morris and his cronies were stuck staring at me. I walked right up to Morris and punched him three times in rapid succesion. I blacked both his eyes, then delivered a blow to his jaw before any of his cronies even had a chance to blink.

Seeing Morris take hits from me drove them forward and the first one was about to deliver a crushing blow to my face when Morris screamed for them to back off. It still amazes me to this day how well his followers take orders. 

"Only you. No more of this," I said, gesturing to his cronies. 

Morris spat on the ground. "Fine," he said.

"Just like that?" 

He wouldn't meet my eyes. "Just like that." 

"Why?" 

He glanced up at me before dropping my gaze so quickly that I thought I'd imagined the entire action. "Because you touched the wall." 

"What does that mean?" 

"No one's ever touched the wall." 

"I'm sure the people who work there touch it all the time." 

He scowled. "I meant normal people, like us. Like you and me." 

"Counting me along the normal people now?" 

"After that scream, you have to be normal. No one who works at that station ever screams like that when they touch the walls." 

"Well of course not, stupid. No one would work at a place where the very walls could drive you insane."

"What happened when you touched it?" 

"It hurt." 

"That wasn't all it was." 

"You wouldn't believe me."

"Try me."

"Why should I? You brought me out here to die." 

"So what?" 

"So if you want to know what the wall does to you, go touch it yourself." 

"Nu-uh." 

"Then don't ask me to tell you." 

He glared at me then, but there was a grudging respect in his eyes. I had gone from target to rival. That day, the one on the hill with Morris and his gang watching me run up to the gas station on the hill as a little boy and come down as an adult, was the day I stopped believing in fairy tales. It was the day I stopped believing that people could be nice.


	6. Chapter Six

_ -Jason- _

The worst part about Monday is the fact it exists at all. Having to face the same unsympathetic teachers, the same bullies, the same building every day during a school week sucks enough already without throwing Monday into the mix. Especially after giving us Saturday and Sunday to begin to hope that maybe the next time Monday rolls around, someone will have found a way to abolish it. Sadly, this never happens. 

I scuff my way over to the entrance of the school. I loathe the beginning of the school week. For most kids, it's the end of their weekend and spoils their fun to come back to what they see as torture. For me, it is a living nightmare. 

Everything that goes wrong in my life always originates here. All my enemies are here. Every fight I've ever been in has been here, in the halls of this school. and ninety percent of the disappointed lectures my father has given me have occured in the prinicpal's office of this school. And for some reason, Mondays are always the worst.

Once I open the door and step inside the school, I begin to make my way to my locker. I sigh with exasperation when I realize that no one other than Morris takes it upon himself to block my path. 

"Hey Jason, heard you guys got a new sister," he says.

"Yeah, what of it?" 

"She seeing anyone? She's smokin' hot." 

"Anyone ever tell you that you're an idiot, Morris?"

His hands clench into fists at his sides and he glares at me. "What are you trying to imply, Baby Jay?" 

I grit my teeth and force myself to ignore the nickname. I've had it since middle school. Ever since I decided to stick to the truth, it has clung to me since everyone else thinks believing in dragons is elementary and childish. If I give Morris an inch, he'll take a mile and I'm not ever willing to do that. I do have to hand it to him, though--he makes a very effective bully. I know that all too well. "She just moved here from Changeover. Where would she have picked up a boyfriend?"

"Thought maybe she had one back in her old town. Or even maybe that you'd had a go at her yourself." He arches his eyebrow, giving me a look that says volumes. 

It takes all of my willpower to keep from punchin him. Ever since that day on the hill, I've made it my policy never to be the one to throw the first punch at anyone. Not even when the person in question is scum like Morris. 

"She's my sister," I say. Even that costs me to admit. Because the truth of the matter is that I have been checking her out. I can't very well tell Morris and his crew that I have the hots for my new foster sister. The rumor would spread like wildfire through town and everyone would know before the last bell rung for the day. That includes Alicia. And I don't want her to know that I find her attractive. That would make talking to her way too awkward and I need to be able to be a brother to her. Which I won't be able to do if Morris knows that I think she's hot. 

"A mere formality," he says, waving a hand to dismiss the words. "She's not related to you by blood. You can't tell me you haven't thought about her that way. I bet you checked her out the first time you saw her." He's trying to goad me into fighting him. The thing is, Morris knows exactly how to push my buttons. 

"She's my sister," I repeat. 

Morris scowls at me. "Find out if she's dating anyone," he says, making it clear that he's not going to put up with it if I don't listen to him.

I'm not going to listen to him. Stooping that low is just not in my personality. "Why should I?" I ask, shoving my hands in my pants' pockets to prevent myself from aiming a punch at his face. I don't want to break my honor code on this piece of trash.

"I want to make her my bitch."

Okay. That is it. Enough is enough. He has finally crossed the line that is just too far to walk. "Funny thing is," I say, my tone going cold. I have to goad him into hitting me now. My honor demands it. "I don't think she wants to be your bitch, Morris. And I'm not even remotely interested in helping you catch girls. It's pathetic to know that you have to ask me for help with that. What kind of loser can't catch a girl on his own?"

A sharp uppercut catches me by surprise and I stop talking, falling back into a kickboxing stance. After that day on the hill, I decided some sort of self defense was necessary to prevent anything like that from ever happening again. Kickboxing was the only thing my parents would agree to pay for, even though I wanted to take tae kwon do. Just another way my parents found to make me miserable. But my honor is assuaged now. Morris has thrown the first punch so now I can fight him to my heart's content.

I kick out, attempting to catch him in the solar plexus, but he's fast and has taken martial arts classes of his own. He spins himself out of range of my kick and carried by the weight of my own momentum, I have a split second to figure out how to keep myself from falling. I quickly throw myself after the leg I kicked out with, turning the kick into a leap and twist to the side at the last second, throwing a punch straight at his face. Morris isn't able to block the punch in time and I feel it connect to his jaw, my hand sinking into the soft flesh. I dance back afterwards, knowing that he has a penchant for close range hand-to-hand while I fight better through the distance that kicking attacks provide. 

He lunges at me and I use his own trick against him, smoothly moving my body out of the projected path of his oncoming attack. Morris isn't anywhere near as quick on his feet as I am and I lash out with a kick that catches him in the chest. He staggers back, somehow managing to catch his balance and doesn't fall down the way I'd intended for him to do with that attack. 

Before either one of us can launch our next attack at the other, the bell signaling that class is going to start in five minutes reverbates throughout the hallway. 

He scowls at me. "We'll finish this later," he says and then swaggers down the hallway towards his locker.

Disgusted with how at ease he is with himself, I stuff my hands in my jeans and make my way to my own locker. Dealing with Morris on a daily basis is just quid pro quo around here for me. I think if I ever start a day of school without him getting in my face I'd die of sheer shock. There's nothing he likes better than bullying people and there's no one he likes to bully more than he likes to bully me. 

I spin the combination dial on my locker, barely giving any thought to the numbers required to unlock it. I've had the same locker for the last three years with the same combination code--a fourth year with the same locker just makes things easier. 

The school policy concerning lockers is that every student keeps the same one every year--this policy's origins are unknown to me, but the freshmen each year get the old senior lockers. If I had to guess, I think the rason for the policy is to prevent an area of lockers where freshmen get targeted on a daily basis from being developed. After all, there can't be a freshman locker area common to each new class if the freshmen have the same lockers when they are sophomores, juniors, and seniors. It has to be some sort of plan to keep violence to a minimum.

As far as that goes, the technique isn't really effective. Seniors still know where the new freshmen lockers are every year and they still converge on those lockers every year to beat freshmen up. I'm grateful Morris sticks to me. The freshmen don't deserve his cruelty. Neither do I, really, but at least I know what is in store for me. I'd rather be beat up myself than have the innocent freshmen be on the receiving end of one of his fists.

I grab the books for my first two classes and my binder. I slam the locker shut and trude down the hall toward the first class of the day, urging the bell to ring so I can escape Mr. Tyler's World History class by getting sent to the principal's office for being late. 

That plan isn't going to work today. Mr. Tyler spots me standing in the hallway and arches an eyebrow at me in silent question. Scowling to myself, I force myself to walk across the threshold into the classroom and slump down in my assigned seat. My dad's lecture about respecting authority is still ringing in my ears and I plaste a fake smile on my face. I am going to get through this class today even if it kills me.

The bell rings and I slide as far down in my seat as I can manage. Maybe if I slump down far enough, Mr. Tyler won't be tempted to call on me during class. Another lecture from my father is the last thing I want when I get home tonight, but if this teacher keeps insisting I share my  "unique perspecetive" with the class, it will be unavoidable. 

Mr. Tyeler is firmly entrenched in the belief that dragons never existed. And that the Wars where we wiped them out are madeup stories humanity invented in order to demonize themselves. To keep humanity humble, or some such dribble. But of course, the question I always ask to that is what humility? I've met maybe two modest people in my life and a minority doesn't make a species. 

The teacher dislikes me, for good reason, but I can tell that he at least semi-respects the fact that my opinions differ from him. What other purpose would he have in continually calling me out in class if not to demonstrate both sides? There's a grudging respect in me for his ability to acknowledge that both sides exist, but it is quickly fading as I'm coming to realize that the only reason he singles me out in class is to further diminish my credibility in the eyes of my classmates. To make me seem even more worthless to the people around me. In essence, Mr. Tyler is a big child, finding satisfication in bullying me simply to provide himself with some form of entertainment. 

"Ahem." Mr. Tyler clears his throat. "If I can have your attention, please." He waits until the chatter dies down to a bit of a whisper here and there and then even it dies down completely. "We have a new student among us today. Alicia Thomas, if you'll please stand up." 

I startle at the name. I hadn't realized my new foster sister had this class with me. I look around the classroom like everyone else, and zero in on her. She's sitting in the very back of the room, hands folded aross her lap. Being singled out doesn't seem to agree with her--her cheeks look pale and if I didn't know better, I'd swear she was about to faint. The girl is so frail it's a wonder she manages to walk ten feet without breaking in half.

Alicia stands and blushes. "Hi," she mumbles, her voice nearly inaudible. 

"Speak up properly, please," Mr. Tyler insists.

I find it very hard to resist the urge to walk up to him and punch him in the nose for speaking so harshly to such a small girl. 

"Hello," she says, her voice a bit more firm. 

"Now Alicia, tell us something about yourself." 

"Oh. Um." She fumbles for a moment. Those questions throw the best people off her game and she is far from adept at handling social situations. This has got to be torture for her. I turn to glare at Mr. Tyler, who notices me glaring but chooses to ignore it. Of course he does. All he wants to do is make his students uncomfortable and what better way to do that than by intimidating the new girl on her first day of school. 

"Well?" he asks. 

"I just moved here from Changeover," she says, biting her lip as if she's wondering if that's enough information. 

Mr. Tyler isn't going to let her get away with that miniscule amount though; I know that before he opens his mouth. "Why did you move here?" he prompts. 

"Oh. Um. The Phlanx family agreed to foster me." 

Anger clouds my mind as I realize that this is what he was after the entire time. He just wants her to admit that there is something that will associate her with me. He loves to torment me because of my insistence that dragons existed and now he's going to bring her down to my level in the eyes of the rest of the school. He is going to turn her into an outcast as surely as I have turned myself into one. It's not right that she should have to suffer because of me, simply because she lives in the same house I live in. It's not fair. I grit my teeth and focus my glare on the desk in front of me, hoping that maybe if I keep my head down Mr. Tyler won't proceed with his plan, won't turn her into a laughing stock in front of the whole class. 

All it will take from him is one single phrase. Two words that will condemn her for the rest of her life here. I bite my lip so hard in an effort to keep from screaming that I can feel the blood pooling up under my tongue and I reach up with angry, jerky, motions to wipe it off my lip and smear it forcefully on my jeans. I can't be a part of this. I can't watch her be humiliated like this. But I don't have a choice. If I stand up and walk out of the room, I'm letting him win. I'm letting him claim victory over me. And my honor, my pride, won't allow that. So I sit at my desk, waiting in misery to hear the next words that I know are going to be coming out of his mouth.

"The Phlanx family?" he asks, his tone belying an incredulity he doesn't feel. "Do you mean that-

Alicia interrupts him. "I mean that I am living in the same house as Jason Phlanx, yes. Why that matters to you is beyond my comprehension."

Mr. Tyler's voice has gone flat. "Do you not realize what sort of reputation Mr. Phlanx has in this town?" 

I can barely believe my ears. Alicia cut him off! She took what he meant to use against her and turned it to her advantage. Swiveling in my seat, I stare at her openly. I am starting to realize that I don't know this girl at all. Her fragility seems to be the most prominent thing about her until moments like this happen and she proves that she has a tougher interior than anyone I have ever met. No one other than me has  _ ever _ spoken to Mr. Tyler like this. He has one of the worst reputations in the school, considered to be the cruelest teacher that works here. And she's turning his questions against him like they're flies to be swatted away in annoyance.

"You're speaking of the alienation he enjoys because he insists on sticking to historical evidence?" 

"Historical evidence? Now you're starting to sound like him." 

Alicia brushes her hair back, throwing it across her shoulder with a careless flick of her wrist. "I don't care about the history you teach or the way you teach it. It doesn't matter to me if you think the Wars happened or if dragons ever existed. It doesn't matter to me if you think I believe the same things that Jason does."

Mr. Tyler arches an eyebrow. "Then what  _ does _ matter to you, Ms. Thomas?" 

She shrugs, a gesture that indicates to everyone in the room that the answer isn't going to be one that's going to be to the teacher's liking. "All I care about, right now, is that you're a teacher at this school and think it appropriate professional behavior to bully the kids you're meant to be teaching. Trying to alienate me from my peers based on a relationship that you have assumed existed between me and Jason simply because we happen to share a house is both irresponsible and unprofessional. If I had the power to fire you, I'd do it in a heartbeat." That said, she sits back down. 

A hush falls over the classroom. My classmates, as well as myself, are all staring at Alicia like we don't have any clue what to say to her or  how to interpret the scene we just witnessed. I know I certainly don't know what to make of it. She slides so effortlessly from shy and breakable to strong and formidable that I don't know what to think. Which one is the real person? I mean, I guess it's possible that she could be both, with her strong side only coming out whenever her code of honor or her principles brought into question. I just don't know.

Mr. Tyler doesn't know how to respond to her either. He is standing at the head of the class, staring at her alongside the students. I grin to myself. It's nice to see this guy off balance every now and then. With the way he walks around like he thinks he knows everything about the entire universe all the time, it's hard to feel any sympathy for the way he just got told off by a seventeen year old girl. 

He clears his throat again and changes the subject. The atmosphere in the classroom is still incredibly awkward, but no one besides me and Alicia are brave enough to even begin to dare to speak back to him. "Open your texts to page 24. We are going to discuss the various hypotheses about what occurred twelve millenia ago to cause humanity to invest a belief that dragons ever walked the world." 

I scowl and flip my text to the indicated page, letting it hit my desk with a loud thud. The text we're learning from right now is preposterous drivel written by the leading authority in the field of false history. Trent Marcus is the author of this book and his ideals have began to pervade the entire Western world. Everyone is starting to look at him for the answers to the biggest question being posed right now--If the Draconic Wars never happened, then what historical event can account for the devastation that wracked the world during the Draconic Age? I roll my eyes as I look down at the text. The most popular thereom is that a small cult banded together to produce the illusion of dragon's attacking large towns, preying off the fear of the unknown that the humans back then possessed.

I snort with disgust as I read that. Humans back then. What a ridiculous phrase. The humans of this time period are still so terrified of the unknown that they think it is necessary to think up ridiculous reasons to replace the truth of what happened before. It's a wonder we have the technology we have today, with the backwards way the rest of humanity lives their lives. 

"Something amusing, Mr. Phlanx?" Mr. Tyler asks. 

"Yeah," I say, waving my hand at the textbook lying open before me, leaning back in my chair so that the front two legs are off the ground. "This."

He frowns at me. "Sit properly." 

I let the chair fall with a thump and fold my arms across my chest. 

"Now tell me what it is that you find so amusing about the text."

"The information in it is pure speculation. There's no facts in this textbook. What you're teaching isn't history at all."

"Then what, pray tell, am I teaching?" 

Uh-oh. That's his  _ watch what you say because I'm going to hang you with it _ shark voice. I grin. This is what I've been waiting for since class began. A way  _ out _ of the classroom. If I say the words I have wrestling around in my mind right now, I am going to get a free pass to the principal's office. Of course, I'm also going to have to listen to my dad lecture me tonight at dinner again about respecting authority, but anything is better than sitting here listening to a fraud try to teach history out of a book packed full of lies. "Lies," I say simply, waiting for the response.

Rather than the outrage I expect, he rolls his eyes at me. "Explain to me how I am teaching you lies when I said outright that we were going to be discussing various hypotheses."

Oh crap. I hadn't actually been paying any attention to the words he'd been speaking. That's not a mistake I make very often. Word traps are generally my specialty, things I use to catch others with. Not something that I usually have used against me. And especially not by teachers who delight in nothing as much as they delight in bullying. "Whether you mentioned discussing hypotheses are not doesn't matter when you still adhere so fervently to the notion that dragons never existed and that the wars never happened. There's historical evidence that is incontrovertible that both of those things occurred, so why do you keep yourself blind to the truth? More than that, why do you blind the students you're supposed to teach a love for history, for  _ facts _ , to blind themselves to truth themselves?"

Mr. Tyler's eyes flash. I've hit a nerve.

I sigh silently in relief. Hitting a nerve is good. It's what I intended to do from the beginning. 

"I'm not having the same argument with you every day of class, Jason. I've told you over and over again that the wars never happened. I've explained patiently to you for a week now that dragons never walked this earth and that there is no evidence, especially not incontrovertible evidence, that indicates they ever existed. So for the last time, I am going to ask you to put aside these childish fantasies and learn the same lesson alongside everyone else. And the only thing I teach," he says, voice dropping dangerously low, "is the truth." 

"No," I say, meeting his eyes calmly. "You teach lies and call them the truth. You and everyone like you are all hypocrites and frauds."

"That's it," he says and pulls out a pink slip of paper. He leans on his desk and scrawls something over it, signing it with a flourish. "Take this and get out of my classroom. I've had enough of you."

I snatch the paper away from him and gather my books in my arms. It's an ISS slip, which is worse than a trip to the principal's office. I saunter out of the classroom and dump my books off at my locker. If the man thinks I'm going to stick around the school all day to serve ISS, he really is insane. I walk straight out the front door, ignoring the people at the office who are calling for me to come back. If school isn't going to teach me anything, I might as well find a better source of education. That thought in mind, I head off to Myth's shop. He's not gonig to question my playing hookey--in fact, on the days it happens it seems almost as if he expects me to show up on his doorstep. I guess I can't fault him for that. He really is the only person in this town that I have ever been able to talk to. 

My thoughts rumble to a halt at that. It's not strictly true anymore, is it? After all, Alicia doesn't seem deadset against listening to anything I have to say. In fact, she said something the other night at dinner that makes me wonder if maybe she believes in dragons as much as I do. Just keeps it better hidden. The girl's got the perfect personality to keep secrets, too. The way she stood up to Mr. Tyler tonight is still kinda tripping me out. 

Alicia was the last person I ever expected to stand up against that teacher. And the way she made him speechless with the things she said to him leaves me breathless with laughter. And admiration. Fuck. Everything this girl does is making me find her more and more attractive. There has got to be some way that I can avoid falling in love with my foster sister. I never asked for this kind of life. I have enough difficulty just keeping myself dedicated to the path I'm on day to day. What kind of complication is falling in love with someone I'm supposed to protect and love only as a sister going to cause me? Fuck. I can't afford this. I don't want these feelings. And I sure as hell don't ever want her to know that I have them. It's going to have to be a secret from everyone. Yet another thing I don't have anyone to talk to about. I can't tell Myth, despite the fact he's more of a mentor than anyone else in this town. Everyone has a moral compass and I don't want him to know that mine has started to point its way south. 


	7. Chapter Seven

_ -Alicia- _

 

In the office with the principal, Monica is going over my schedule. Why we're not speaking with the guidance counselor, the person who is actually responsible for student schedules, is something beyond my comprehension. 

Truthfully, though, I have no interest in the reason we're here. I don't even want to be at this human learning institution. Everything I'm going to hear here is going to be false. Okay, not everything. I have to admit that humans have done remarkably well in the mathematics and logic-based sciences. It's the history they have backwards. Well, that and religion. 

I did a little research last night, using my link with the other members of the Clan to discover what all they knew about human religion. It seems that humans view religion rather the same way that they look at dragons. They are more than willing to make up whatever they want about either subject and then preach it as gospel to the people around them, completely disregarding the facts. It's just yet another thing for me to add to the ever growing list of things that I despise about the human race. 

I sigh, leaning back against the chair I've been sitting in ever since Monica looked at my schedule and decided to take it upon herself to get it changed around for her own satisfaction. She made some rudimentary comment about wanting me to be in as few classes as possible with her son before the argument started, but it seemed rather half-hearted. This offhand comment, did, however, spark my interest as to  why she wanted me away from Jason, but I wasn't about to ask her flat out. It was entirely possible that she had noticed her son was attracted to me and that she was simply doing her best as a parent to keep the two of us separated from one another. 

Of course, knowing what I do about her and the rest of the Phlanx family makes that seem like a very unlikely cause for her actions. From what I've seen, both her and her husband are doing anything that remotely resembles listening or paying any sort of attention to their son. 

No. My best guess is that this is some sort of misplaced need of hers to try and keep my reputation from being marred by his bad one in this town. If his family is a valid marker for the way the rest of the people in this town sees him, then there's probably a solid reason for her to try to keep my reputation protected to the best of her abilities. 

Whatever. It doesn't matter to me one way or another how Monica chooses to spend her time. Plus, being stuck here in this office is better than learning how to navigate the halls of this school. My eyes widen when I realize that I'm in the office. I mean, I already knew that, but the thought really sinks in. 

Before I forget, I have to act. This is a vital part of the plan. I'm still well within the time paramters that I set, but since the chance has chosen to present itself so early on in the time frame, I might as well take advantage of the fact.

Glancing surreptiously to the side, I can tell the two humans aren't going to notice me leaving. I doubt they'd notice a tornado if it fell on top of them, as caught as they are in arguing with each other. They sure as hell aren't going to notice me stepping outside of the room and leaving them to their sparring. At least not for some time. 

I slink along the hall, peeking into each open office. Some have people working at their desks, but I'm being stealthy enough that no one notices my presence. My eyes finally land on the room I've been searching for--the loudspeaker control room. I'm in luck that it ended up being in the office, rather than in some obscure janitor closet somewhere in the middle of the school or behind it or something. I've been in a lot of human high schools and have seen a lot of insane things. It wouldn't surprise me, at this point, if I stumbled across a human high school that really did have a swimming pool or two on the roof.

I grab the edge of the door with my right hand and inch it further open, poking my head around it to see if there is anyone currently occupying the room. I breathe a sigh of relief when I realize that I'm alone. 

This is going flawlessly. Of course it is; I've only had twelve millenia to plan everything out. Granted, this phase has only been worked on for about two millenia considering the fact that Winston Heights didn't exist as a human settlement before then. 

I reach into my pocket and pull out a dime-sized coin-shaped object. It will look like an actual dime to any human that spots it and I am going to push a bit of magic into it to prevent them from getting the urge to pick it up and walk away with it. And I'm going to glue it into place once I charge it with the appropriate magic, so even those humans with a natural resistance to manipulative magic won't be able to make off with it in their possession. It'll stay put. I'm not a big fan of leaving things to chance, but I will when I have to.

I purse my lips, my eyebrows furrowing as I concentrate on the small coin in my hand. It isn't, in actuality, a coin at all. It's a flattened dragon spinal spike, one that I pulled off the last skin I shed and flattened with magic for this exact purpose. I pour my will into the spinal spike, weaving the magic into it that, with one word of power, will release the most powerful War Cry that I possess. It is the Cry that marks me as the War Leader for the entire draconic race as well as the War Leader of the Crystal Clan, for the strength of the magic inside it will rally every living dragon to its source. It isn't physically possible for any dragon to resist the call of a War Leader that belongs to their own clan, but to live up to the legacy of the Crystal Clan, your magic has to be strong enough that no living dragon on earth will be able to resist the call of your magic at the height of its power when used for its intended purpose.

That means when the final phase of my strategy is put into motion that every dragon walking around on earth in human form will rise to the cause. This is the thing that separates us most from humanity. We are a united race. Petty squabbles and wars of atrition are not something that have ever plagued our species. The very idea of fighting over the ridiculous things that human beings fight over every day never even occured to us as potential problems until we saw that humans considered them to be serious ones. And once we saw that, we deduced that they were an inferior race, still primitive and in the process of growth. We dismissed them out of hand, never considering them a threat until they became the weapon that nearly destroyed us. 

The spike finishes charging and I have a sigh of relief. Charging it was the most risky part of the entire plan. It requires complete concentration to fully charge a War Cry and condense the magic into such a small container. A flattened spine is the size of an American's human dime. Then there's creating the trigger magic and weaving it along the surface--a job of incredible complexity. 

It's almost miraculous that no one has walked into this room. Of course, all a human would have seen if they had walked into the room would have been me standing around like an idiot and having a staring contest with a dime. There was never any danger that my identity would be uncovered; that risk never existed. The transformation magic we use to appear human is so complex that even in the days humans had vast amounts of magic dancing at their own fingertips, they couldn't uncover our identities or recognize us as dragons. 

No, the risk came from the possibility of being interrupted during the weaving of the trigger magic. If that had happened, the Cry would have been released when it was less than fully charged. If that had happened, the less powerful dragons amongst us that are unable to resist such a weak Cry would have been forced to expose themselves, forced to tear out of their human costumes and reveal themselves in their pure forms. It would have sent humanity into a massive full-scale global panic that neither side would've been prepared to handle.

I'd talked with my lieutenants and the other war dragons multipe times concerning this issue, but none of them had been able to uncover a foolproof failsafe. Granted, me choosing to do this at a time when lots of humans are around probably wasn't the smartest idea I've ever had, but I'm sometimes susceptible to bouts of impatience. 

I just got lucky that no one noticed me this time. I shrug away the concerns. Since I've already fully charged the War Cry and woven in the trigger magic, there's no more cause for concern. The only thing I have left to do now is install the device. 

The loudspeaker system isn't a necessary prop at all for the magic I've worked. I could install this spinal spike anywhere, on any human surface. I could simply dispose of this device entirely and rely on my own voice when the day of our decided revealing slides into place. But this is one of our many failsafes. Every other dragon that is part of this plan has their own failsafe to install in their own cities at their own specially chosen locations. We aren't going to leave anything to chance, not this time. And if, for some unforeseen reason, I am caught and unable to deliver the Cry myself (which is what the plan originally calls for), my lieutenants--alongside the other war dragons of the Crystal Clan (as well as the elders of the clan, plus two or three war dragons outsdie of the clan)--have been given the word of power that will activate this Cry.

When the day comes, all of us will speak it in unision, so that no human power on this earth will be able to stop us from having our day of revelation. Dragons will walk on this land again. There's no doubt in my mind about that.

I slap the coin against the underside of the main loudspeaker. I'm installing it here for my own amusement. What bettter place to put a Cry than on the thing that humans use for their own seemingly important annoucements? All that installing this device is going to do is make it start actively seeking out the word of power. It is a draconic word, so no human could accidentally utter it--no human mouth could produce the rolls and guttural stops of the draconic language.

For us to learn to speak human languages took three millenia by itself; we had to go around acting mute and mentally handicapped because we didn't understand the language of the race we'd viewed as primitive before the Wars. A lot of discussion occurred concerning whether or not our lack of interest in actively pursuing knowledge about humans could have contributed somewhat to the Wars. It was an easily reached conclusion that our arrogance and pride in our own superiority may very well have contributed to the War and in fact may have triggered the key elements that started them in the first place. That's why arrogance became the one and only "sin" that dragons have laws against. We understand now that we are not an infallible race and plan everything we do according to that understanding.

Every plan, every strategy that I come up with is based on the idea that someone out there is going to be smarter than me. They're going to outwit me and I am going to fail. Everything is planned with a high degree of pessimism and negativity, all of us preparing for the very worst possible outcome. We only proceed with anything now when we can look at all our negativity and see that our chance of success is higher than fifty percent. We're a realistic species and know that never acting because a percentage of success is too low is just as bad as being too arrogant and assuming that we will always win every fight we engage in. Both are backwards ways to live and we do the best we can to stay astride the middle road, because we take pride in the fact that we consider change and progress a blessing. Something that humans seem determined to entirely ignore. 

I turn back to the task at hand and with a small burst of magic, the device is installed. I slip back out of the room and sneak back into the principal's office, reclaiming the chair I vacated only a few minutes before. 

The principal and my foster mother are still hardcore going at each other over my schedule but at some point during my absence, they apparently pulled the guidance counselor into the fray as well. She's the only one who notices me enter, indicating that she sees me only with a slight quirk of her eyebrow, but she doesn't say anything to the others about me having been absent for a large chunk of the conversation, for which I find myself feeling oddly grateful. 

I lean back against the chair and close my eyes, hoping they find a resolution for this at some point in the near future. Not at all interested in listening to them dicuss my class schedule for any length of time, I thrust my senses out into the hallway, searching for some conversation somewhere that will entertain me until these three get tired of talking. 

I pick up bits of mindless chatter and little tidbits about future dates and random pieces of fashion advice. I frown in annoyance. Do these people have nothing better to talk about than this random trivial crap? 

As soon as I think that, I stumble across the sound of my foster brother's voice and I zone in on the conversation he's having. 

"Yeah. What of it?" Jason asks.

I wonder who he's talking to, but I get my answer fairly quickly. 

"She seeing anyone? She's smokin' hot." 

I try not to gag. The idea of sexual liasions with a human disturb me to the point I almost switch off my senses. Humans and dragons just are  _ not _ compatible. And I'm not one of those dragons who thinks it's okay to sleep with a human just because I happen to be wearing a human body. I'm still dragon underneath and nothing about these soft, fleshy creatures appeals to me in any way. I'm probably as turned off by the thought of having sexual relations with a human as a human would be turned off by the thought of having sexual relations with a dragon in its true form. Maybe more so. 

"Anyone ever tell you that you're an idiot, Morris?" Jason asks.

Now I have my answer to who he's talking to. Remembering that his father lectured him about fighting with Morris makes me keep listening to this conversation, despite how disgusting I find it on a personal level.

"What are you trying to imply, Baby Jay?" Morris asks.

"She just moved here from Changeover," Jason says. "Where would she have had time to pick up a boyfriend?" 

Where indeed. There are no human-shaped dragons anywhere near me. Not to mention, the one and only time I tried sex while wearing a human body with another dragon wearing a human body I couldn't even begin to get myself interested. The physical appearance of the human species is just a complete turn-off for me. Needless to say, I've been chaste for a few thousand years. Not that it's a problem; war dragons have the lowest libido of any other type of dragon. We are one of the few types of dragons that mate maybe once every five thousand years and then don't take another sexual partner for the next five, waiting until our drive to mate comes upon us. 

"Thought maybe she had one back in her old town. Or even maybe that you'd had a go at her yourself," Morris says, bringing my focus back to the conversation between him and Jason. 

"She's my sister," Jason says. His voice is deceptively calm and I find myself feeling impressed with him, once more. I know that he is attracted to the human form I wear and that doesn't bother me because I'm not the human. I feel slightly bad because it's a bit unorthodox for me to pretend to be human and not pretend to be interested in the guy who is obviously interested in me. Some dragons are able to play the double roles well, even going so far as to have human wives or husbands (regretfully for their human spouses, they are always the barren half of an infertile couple. Our species just aren't compatible in that way), but I am not one of those dragons that can maintain that type of disguise. The sex just weirds me out too much.

"A mere formality," Morris says. "She's not related to you by blood. You can't tell me you haven't thought about her that way. I bet you checked her out the first time you saw her." 

"She's my sister."

"Find out if she's dating anyone."

"Why should I?" 

"I want to make her my bitch," Morris says.

I have to stop myself from bursting out into laughter in front of the people in the principal's office. I don't need to give them any reason to focus on me when they're having such a splendid time yelling at one another. But the idea of a human trying to make me anything, let alone his "bitch," is so amusing that I almost am not able to keep from laughing out loud. It's just so completely ridiculous; the very idea that a human could make a dragon do anything against its will is just beyond preposterous.

"Funny thing is," Jason says. "I don't think she wants to be your bitch, Morris. And I'm not even remotely interested in helping you catch girls. It's pathetic to know that you have to ask me for help with that. What kind of loser can't catch a girl on his own?"

The dialogue stops and is replaced by the sounds of fighting. I can't really make out which one of them is winning or which one of them is landing which hit. It doesn't really matter. I'm amused and a bit shocked that Jason has taken upon himself to defend my honor the same way his mother has taken it upon herself to try and prevent my reputation from being sullied through the affiliation I have with her son simply by living in their house. 

The bell rings and without waiting for any of the people around me to finish talking about my schedule--at this point, if they haven't figured out what they're going to do, they're never going to reach a conclusion--I snatch the paper out of their hands and walk out of the office, ignoring the outraged exclamations behind me. I glance down at the paper. World History is my first subject and I groan. Just what I need, to listen to the human teachers drone on inaccurately about history during the first class of the day during the first day of the week that I'm spending at this particular human learning institution.

The rooms are numbered the same way most high school rooms are numbered, with odd numbered rooms on the left hand side of the hall and even numbered rooms on the right hand side of the hall. World History is in Room 138 according to the slip of paper that is serving as my itinerary for the day. I wonder idly if Monica is going to say anything to me tonight at dinner about leaving a conversation before it's over. Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll realize how absolutely ridiculous she was being in that office, but I have a high level of doubt that that will ever happen. Her and her husband both are rather uptight, snobby, humans. They're the type of humans I dislike the most. If the plan didn't call for me to be situated in Winston Heights, I would have found a way out of this foster family yesterday.

Okay. I have to admit to myself that maybe I wouldn't have. Jason does fascinate me a bit. On a purely and strictly mental level. His physical appearance holds absolutely no appeal for me. For some reason, humans think that they are the most remarkable species in existence and that there's no way that other races wouldn't want to sleep with them. There are a ridiculous amount of movies that humans have produced where the main characters end up falling in love with one another, even when one of the two of them is very obviously not human. Not even remotely human. And then they have children who end up looking purely human. It's pretty obvious from movies like this that human beings really do think they're the end-all, be-all of the entire universe. It's rather sickening and mildly frightening if you really take the time to stop and think about it. 

I walk into Room 138 and spot an empty desk at the back of the classroom. Maybe if I sit in the far back, the teacher will leave me alone and I won't be subjected to the same boring introductory routine that all teachers seem to think it's necessary for all new students to be subjected to. They don't care that they make the students self-conscious when they single them out that way or that they are putting that student on display for the entire class to see and judge and make fun of or bully if they are inclined in that direction. 

The bell signaling the start of class rings right as I slide into the seat I have chosen. I notice Jason walk into the classroom in the nick of time and wonder why he is cutting it so close. I know that he has been here just as long as I have, considering Monica drove us both to school, so there has to be some sort of other reason that he was almost late for class. Jason isn't the kind of kid who seems to actively seek trouble; it seems more like his convictions consistently get him to trouble even when he isn't actively seeking to put them on display for the entire world. A part of me feels a bit of pity for him; the rest of me just doesn't care. 

"Ahem." The teacher of this class clears his throat. I glance down at my paper and see that his name is Rodney Tyler. Ahh. It clicks with me, the reason that Jason cut arrival to this class so close to the bone. This must be the Mr. Tyler that he fought with last week; the one he got in trouble with his parents with over the weekened.

"If I can have your attention, please." He waits to speak again until the noise in the classroom has died down completely. It's an effective tactice to silence a room, if a bit outdated and slightly arrogant. "We have a new student among us today. Alicia Thomas, if you'll please stand up."

Fuck. Of course this teacher would be another one that has to single out the new students. I get to my feet slowly, making sure that I am coming off as self-conscious as I possibly can. I want this entire classroom to be full of people who feel nothing but pity for me. "Hi," I mumble, making sure that my voice is muffled and close to inaudible.

"Speak up properly, please." 

Great. This teacher is a bully. Such an easy test to run in order to get the full picture of a human teacher; it only took me about two years of high school experience to figure out how to manipulate teachers. They're around human children all the time and not used to the level of guile that humans around other adults on a constant basis get used to. They're a bit less cynical than other human beings, which means that they are slightly easier for me to manipulate. And I do it with relish. After all, I have to find something to entertain myself. 

"Hello," I say, raising my voice to a volume that will satisfy any teacher, even one like this one who derives his joy out of bullying his students. No wonder Jason got in a fight with him on the first week of school. He's a miserable little man. 

"Now Alicia, tell us something about yourself." 

"Oh. Um," I say, stumbling on purpose. This is another typical question that bully teachers ask. It's like they have to see what question they need to ask to make a student self-conscious to the point that they break down crying and if that doesn't work, they turn to doing what they think will cause the entire class to turn against them. In my case, it'll probably be something to do with Jason Phlanx. His presence is like a red flag to this teacher and if he can use my affiliation with Jason against me in any way, he'll do so in a heartbeat. I know that almost on instinct. 

"Well?" he prompts.

"I just moved here from Changeover," I say, biting my lip in a gesture that I hope will show the rest of the class that I am feeling uncertain. I know that the gesture is going to give Mr. Tyler some satisfaction--sure enough, I can see a small glint in his eye and a fraction of an upturned smirk so miniscule that it's barely noticeable. But my senses are enhanced--I left them that way when I left the principal's office--so I can see every miniscule crease on his face, every wrinkle line, every pore of his skin. Human sight just does not compare to the intense way that dragons see life and the world around them. It's one of the things that I miss the most about my true form.

"Why did you move here?" Mr. Tyler asks.

Great. Another question. He's just going to move this into the realm of his comfort and attempt to bully me. I make a decision then. He's already bullied Jason this year for something the guy probably didn't deserve--I can already tell that Jason is so committed to the truth about anything and everything that he's not going to speak out of turn without just cause. And if he spoke out against this teacher, he had just cause. I'm going to head this off before Mr. Tyler can use it against me. "Oh. Um. The Phlanx family agreed to foster me." The pauses are just a way to keep Mr. Tyler thinking that he has the upperhand. I want to catch him off guard and if I can keep him thinking that I am a self-conscious teenager who doesn't know anything, I'm going to have a much higher chance of catching him in my trap than if I speak with any type of semblance of confidence. 

But I do have to admit that I am wondering how Jason is taking all this. I throw a sidelong glance to the chair that he's sitting in and see that he's slumped down as far as he can into it, as if he is trying to escape the room and Mr. Tyler by hiding under his desk as much as he is able to manage. I feel a bit of pity for him that quickly turns into anger at this so-called teacher. How can one of these humans who are taught to  _ teach _ the rest of their species be so eager to destroy the ego of their students? It would be unthinkable in the dragon world for any of our sages to behave like this towards a student. If it were to ever happen (and as far as I know, it has never occurred amongst the draconic race), that sage would be stripped of his title and exiled from the community for a period of no less than a thousand years. 

A thousand years, you have to remember, is less than a blink of an eye for a dragon whose lifespan spans twenty thousand years at a minimum. The average life expectancy for a dragon is seventy-five thousand years. Seventy-five millenia. It's so much time that a human would stagger at the very idea that something out there could live that long. But for us, seventy-five millenia is just another fact of life. I've known dragons that have lived upwards of one hundred and twenty-five millenia. 

The oldest Elder amongst our clan at this particular moment in time is one hundred and forty three thousand years old and still healthy. Dragons don't age the way humans do either. Our bones don't get brittle and our skin doesn't dry out and wrinkle. Our muscles don't atrophy and our senses don't fail us. Once we reach our prime at five thousand, that's where we stay. That's the way we look for the rest of our lives. Death doesn't come on us unexpectedly the way that it does humans. Not unless we're killed the way we were during the Wars do we ever meet our ends without knowing it's going to happen.

In dragon society, death isn't something that we are unable to control. We are very much in control of how long we live and when we die. The magic we use every day of our lives works as a type of life support system for us. We are purely magical creatures--without magic, we would simply cease to exist. Magic is required for the survival of our species. It's what makes us dragons. It's what makes us exist at all.

Every dragon is born partially integrated into the magic that makes their entire biological system work. It takes five thousand years for that system and the draglets to fully mesh with each other, completely opening the dragon up to the experience of a full magic mesh. The partial magic mesh of the first five thousand years is what accounts for the immaturity of draglets because they have yet to fully integrate with the entire system of magic that underlies our entire existence.

What that means for a new dragon is that he or she is unable to interface with other dragons or draglets. They do not have access to the minds of every other dragon in existence because they haven't learned to fully mesh, to fully integrate. They spend the first five thousand years of life simply learning how to appreciate the life around them and the magic inherent in that life. And one day, after about five thousand years (although some mature earlier and some mature much later), everything that the magic is trying to show them will suddenly "click" in their heads and they will fall seamlessly into the mesh. Once that happens, they move up from being a draglet in their respective clan to a dragon withotu a specialty.

Once they become a dragon without a specialty, the next step is, of course, to choose a specialty and designate yourself as that type of dragon. The magic the dragon meshed with will help him or her sift through all the different types of magic until they find, together, something that the dragon has an affinity for and that the magic it meshed with is willing to help it fully develop. For me, that specialty was War magic, which is a rather rare type of magic in dragon society because War is only ever fought outside of the species. It wasn't even possible to declare a War specialty before humans walked the earth alongside us--they were the ones who brought the very concept of War to my race. I am both thankful for the experience and resentful of the horrors and atrocities they have inflincted upon us. It allowed me to become what I am--a War Leader--but I still don't think that the loss of so many lives was worth the price. 

But I need to stop thinking about my culture and start paying attention to the teacher. After all, it's going to be rather difficult to put him in his place if he catches me daydreaming in the middle of class. 

"The Phlanx family?" Mr. Tyler says. "Do you mean that--

I cut him off before he can finish. He has walked rather neatly straight into my trap. Humans. Some of them are so oblivous it's a wonder they ever survived, let alone developed magic back during the Wars strong enough to kill my kind. "I mean that I am living in the same house as Jason Phlanx, yes. Why that matters to you is beyond my comprehension."

Mr. Tyler's voice goes flat. "Do you not realize what sort of reputation Mr. Phlanx has in this town?"

"You're speaking of the alienation he enjoys because he insists on sticking to historical evidence?" I ask, masking my amusement that this human has fallen so perfectly into the trap I laid for him.

"Historical evidence? Now you're starting to sound like him." 

I smirk to myself. If someone has to try and flip around what you've already turned around and flipped on them, they've already lost. I flick my hair over my shoulder before I speak; it's a personal dance of victory that I do for myself that no one else will interpret that way. I had to find  _ something _ to replace the victory flight that dragons enjoy or I would've gone crazy millenia ago. "I don't care about the history you teach or the way you teach it." This isn't strictly true. It's true that I don't care about the way he teaches history or what he deigns as important history or accurate history in this class. I do care about historical facts, but considering the fact that I am relying on the Great Forgetting to occur amongst humans, I feel less and less inclined every year to protest when someone says that dragons didn't exist. It just helps move my own plans ahead. "It doesn't matter to me if you think the Wars ever happened or if dragons ever existed," I say, continuing. "It doesn't matter to me if you think I believe the same things that Jason does." 

"Then what  does matter to you, Ms. Thomas?" Mr. Tyler asks, his voice full of sweet sickly venom. 

I shrug, indicating to the rest of the room that I know he's not going to enjoy the rest of the words that come out of my mouth. There's no helping it though--this is the trap that I've set and now I have to spring it. If I don't, I'm not worth my salt as a War Leader of the Crystal Clan. Or of the draconic race as a whole, come to think of it. "All I care about right now," I say, "is that you're a teacher at this school and think it appropriate professional behavior to bully the kids you're meant to be teaching. Trying to alienate me from my peers based on a relationship that you have assumed existed between me and Jason simply because we happen to share a house is both irresponsible and unprofessional. If I had the power to fire you," I conclude, "I'd do it in a heartbeat." And then I sit down.

He chokes and sputters for a moment and the next thing he says is something about opening our textbooks. Obviously, I have won this semi-argument type thing. I don't even have the proper words for it. But I won. And that's all that matters to me. 

Not even five minutes pass before I hear Jason snort. 

"Something amusing, Mr. Phlanx?" Mr. Tyler asks. 

I roll my eyes at the typical bully-like behavior this man is exhibiting. He obviously needs a target to let out some steam against, especially now that he's lost so much face in front of his class. 

"Yeah." Jason says. He waves a hand out to his textbook, leaning his seat so precariously backwards as he lifts the legs of it off the ground that I am almost certain he's going to fall. "This." 

"Sit properly."

Jason lets the chair fall to the ground, the noise causing about half the people in the classroom to wince at the loud sound it makes. 

"Now tell me what it is that you find so amusing about the text."

"The information in it is pure speculation," Jason says. "There's no facts in that textbook.What you're teaching isn't history at all."

"Then what, pray tell, am I teaching?" Mr. Tyler asks.

"Lies," Jason answers.

I have to bite my lip to keep from bursting out in laughter. The casual superiority in Jason's tone is almost too much to take; the contempt in his voice an obvious affront to the history teacher who would rather bully his students rather than teach them so amusing that I am forced to hold my breath alongside biting my lip to keep my amusement at bay. It's difficult to do this without choking or spitting or drawing attention to myself by failing to laugh, but somehow I manage not to let my amusement show. It's an incredibly difficult thing to do, though, what with the combination of Jason's casual dismissal of Mr. Tyler and the consternation showing so clearly on the teacher's face. I drop my senses back down to human range and it helps a little bit; now I can't quite see every little detail of both of their faces. It at least makes my laughter easier to keep at bay. 

"Explain to me how I am teaching you lies when I said outright that we were going to be discussing various hypotheses." 

"Whether you mentioned discussing hypotheses or not doesn't matter when you still adhere so ferverently to the notion that dragons never existed or that the Wars never happened. There's historical evidence that is incontrovertible that both of those things occurred, so why do you keep yourself blind to the truth? More than that, why do you blind the students you're supposed to teach a love for history, for  facts , to blind themselves to truth themselves?"

I silently applaud my foster brother. I provided him with a course of action earlier, showing him subtly the way to most efficiently trap this teacher. And whether he realizes it or not, Jason has efficiently demonstrated to me his ability to follow subtle hints and clues. I wonder if maybe I should introduce him to Tim. 

I think Tim would get a kick out of meeting this type of human. He usually deals with trailer park renegades and homeless people. Those are the only ones that ever come up to his shop because they are the only ones desperate enough for the barrier I put around his shop two millenia ago not to bother. Every other human that gets within fifty yards of the witness will have an incredibly strong urge to run as far as they can in the other direction. And those humans that are highly sensitive to any type of magic will feel that urge for about two miles in any direction from the shop. 

Tim is one of my lieutenants and an incredibly private dragon. He doesn't like to be bothered. So instead of switching in and out of human forms every fifty years or so, he has maintained the same one for the last five millenia. The only reason he is able to do this is because of the strength of the barrier I put up around his shop. The fact that the elders allowed him to settle down in one place isn't too surprising; they allowed a handful of solitary dragons to do the same. Most of the human legends about haunted houses are really lived in houses that are inhabited by a dragon surrounded by a keep-out barrier magic so strong that it makes them believe they're seeing ghosts and poltergeists and whatever other weird crazy things they can dream up inside their heads to be afraid of. Everything except dragons, that is. There's a limiter on the barrier that prevents anyone that isn't part of the draconic race from thinking about dragons at all. Another failsafe. We're rather fond of those. 

Mr. Tyler speaks again. "I'm not having the same argument with you every day of class, Jason. I've told you over and over again that the Wars never happened. I've explained patiently to you for a week now that dragons never walked this earth and that there is no evidence, especially not incontrovertible evidence, that indicates they ever existed. So for the last time, I am going to ask you to put aside these childish fantasies and learn the same lesson alongside everyone else. And the only thing I teach," he says, his voice dropping to a low, almost threatening tone, "is the truth." 

"No," Jason says, his tone almost as cold as Mr. Tyler's. "You teach lies and call them the truth. You and everyone like you are all hypocrites and frauds." 

"That's it," Mr. Tyler says, turning to his desk and drawing out a pink slip. He scribbles some words on it and then signs his name with a flourish. I wonder if it's a detention slip, an ISS slip, or a suspension slip. "Take this and get out of my classroom. I've had enough of you."

Jason snatches it out of his hand and collects his books before walking calmly out of the room.

Yes, I think to myself as I watch him leave. I definitely think that it is time to introduce him to Timothy Dent. I resolve to tell him my decision when school ends. I wonder how he will react when he finds out that my lieutenant is one of the authors of the books he no doubt frequents, considering he is considered one of the "human" experts on dragons. And he is considered by his human peers to be so paranoid that he never tells anyone where he lives and it is seen as perfectly normal. The quirks and perks that writers enjoy in the human world will never cease to amaze me. What other profession is there where you can disappear entirely from the face of the planet, never appearing at any social event whatsoever, and still make millions of dollars off one book? I tell you, it is quite insane. And rather impressive. Plus, it keeps Tim satisfied. And amused. Which is good for me, because having a bored War Lieutenant on my hands would be a nightmare in the making. And I have enough on my plate already without having to worry about that.


	8. Chapter Eight

_ -Jason- _

At Myth's, I settle into the couch and start reading the history text that he had put aside for me. I get so absorbed that it's only when he shakes me gently with a hand on my shoulder to tell me that it's two forty-five that I realize I need to make my way back to the school. After all, while I may have skipped the lessons today (which I'm sure I'll get no end of grief for later at home), the fact remains that I have to get a ride back to the house with my mother. I don't particularly want to walk home, considering that my house is about three miles from the school. I mean, I guess I could take the bus, since there's a little market on the corner of the street that I live on where it stops, but I'm not really all that fond of riding the bus either. A lot of the people that ride it on a daily basis seem to be the kind of people who have forgotten what bathing is. The smell is almost always overwhelming and it's a wonder that the scent doesn't cling to me after I get off the bus whenever I ride it. That never ceases to amaze me. 

I sigh and look down at the page number so that I can remember what spot I got to the next time I am able to find some time to come by Traps and read a little. The fifty pages I managed to read today was just basic information, stuff that I have known for years, but it was written in such a way that the author made the old content seem fresh. Being able to read information you already know and not be bored is a sure sign of a good author and it makes me take a mental note to look into buying this author's stuff whenever I have a job and can afford it. The only problem with that, of course, is the fact that there isn't a single person in this town who will hire me, so having money at any point in the near future will have to wait until I get accepted into a college somewhere in a town that doesn't know me well enough to judge me and won't get all weirded out by whatever books I decide to purchase for my own reading leisure. 

Once the book is safely behind the counter, I leave the shop and make my way back to the school without any further delay. I don't take any detours, though I am tempted to stop at the local fast food restaurant, Mere Trifles. I manage to avoid indulging the impulse however and make it back to school right as the last bell of the day rings. I stay sure to stay out of sight of the office, because I have no interest in being questioned about where I went while I was playing hooky today. 

The cars are lined up where parents are waiting to pick up their children that I can't even see how far they stretch. When I was walking up to the school, though, I did notice that traffic was stalled out in the street by parents waiting to turn into the school. Why they don't have a better system for traffic control is something that still continues to elude me. If they were smart, they'd stagger the times that each class was released. Seniors would leave an hour before everyone else, juniors thirty minutes after the seniors left, sophomores thirty minutes after the juniors left, and freshmen thirty minutes after the sophomores left. The times would have to be adjusted in the mornings too, so that seniors were the first ones to arrive and the freshmen the last, but it would be a much more efficient method of operation. And it would free up the traffic. There would be fewer accidents if the school used this system. Someone should suggest it and get it implemented. 

Someone other than me, that is. With the reputation I have in this town, me suggesting anything like that would be met with instant derision and they'd laugh me right out of the room, probably saying something cutting about how they wouldn't ever stoop as low as to take any type of advice from someone who believes in dragons seriously even if their lives depended on it. There are definitely days when I feel bitter enough to wish that their lives did depend on listening to me, sometimes, but mostly I'm just glad that they don't. I can't imagine how horrible it will feel to be the only person in the world to know something about a major upcoming event that would be disastrous for humans as a whole and go around talking about it on a daily basis, just trying to get people to listen to a single word coming out of my mouth. The idea is worse than horrifying. And more than a little bit sobering. Because it makes you wonder why people, why humanity as a whole has become so complacent, so unwilling to listen to the facts of the world that are staring them in the face. Instead, they are consumed, swallowed whole, by the need to stand around and wait for someone else to do something to change the world. 

It's like everyone in the world who hears the same phrase- If you want to see change in the world, it has to start with you- has just completely forgotten that it exists. They are more than willing to push aside their problems and say "oh, well, I'll deal with it later," and then just put it off for so long that they forget about it. And then they do that with the next problem they have and the next one and the next one. It's no wonder so many people are diagnosed with mental illness every year. Our entire society is founded on the underlying principal of what causes mental illness to begin with--sheer laziness. Or, put more succintly, the inability to have the desire or drive to face up to their problems and work on fixing them instead of avoiding them. We're an avoidant society. It's ridiculous the lengths people will go to in order to avoid having any small portion of responsibility on their plates.

I spot Alicia leaning against one of the pillars as far away from the people directing traffic as it is possible to get. I shrug and decide there's nothing better to do than talk to my new foster sister. I am going to have to get over this insane crush that I have developed for her at some point in the near future anyway or both of our lives are going to prove to be very awkward. And talking to her will eliminate the sudden urge I have to go find Morris and finish the fight we started earlier. The last thing I need is for my mom to see me iniating a fight, even if it's only a verbal one, after she listened to my father lecture me less than two days ago. Plus, she's not a big fan of violence and none of my fights with Morris ever end up with either one of us anywhere less than a complete bloody mess. 

I don't want to go home cut up and bruised. Speaking to Alicia will at least seem relatively harmless. Well, at least to me. My mother probably has herself convinced that anyone who is seen talking to me will end up on the chopping block alongside me. The sad thing about that is the fact that it's probably the truth. The people in this town are so close-minded that it's amazing they're able to get up in the morning and look at themselves in the mirror. Like, I have never met such close-minded, repressed people in my life. The sad thing about that is that I haven't met anyone aside from Myth who isn't like  _ them. _ That really makes me want to cry at night because if this is the state that humanity is in as a whole, then there is something radically wrong about our entire world. 

Alicia arches an eyebrow at me as I walk over to her. "Quite a speech today," she says.

I flush a bit. I hope that she's not judging me or that if she is, that she's finding me on just this side of impressive rather than on the down slope of the loser slide. "Yeah, well," I say, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. I forgot for a moment that Alicia is a girl and that I am interested in said girl. And I have a very unfortunate problem of always finding myself tongue-tied and inarticulate around the girls that I find attractive.

Alicia either doesn't notice or doesn't care and she continues the conversation as if nothing is out of the ordinary. I breathe a silent sigh of relief that is mingled with a smidge of disappointment because part of me was, of course, hoping that she'd notice me and find me attractive in the same light. I'm either not her type or she's not interested in dating at all. It's hard to tell. I mean, she is a girl after all. They're like an entirely different species of their own, forget dragons. At least dragons would be so radically different from humans that the idea of sexual reproduction with one of them would never occur. The very idea of it is disturbing. Can you imagine all the scales and the spine spike thingies and the tail? I mean, how would that even begin to work between a dragon and a human? No. I so don't want to think those thoughts. They are too disturbing just to consider, let alone to really explore in-depth.

Alica says, "That was the teacher you got in a fight with last week, wasn't it?" 

"Oh, Mr. Tyler?" I ask, feeling dumb as the question comes out of my mouth. Who else would the girl be talking about? It's not like we had any other classes together today. Well, we may have...I just wasn't there for them so I don't really know if our school schedules mesh at all. 

"Yes," she says, her lips quirking up. 

Great, now she's laughing at me. "Yes," I say. "That's the teacher I fought with last week."

"So that's the guy your parents were telling  you not to fight with. The one who inspired that little lecture about respecting authority and how if you didn't shape up with your teachers that you'd end up jail," Alicia says.

"Yeah. That pretty much sums it up."

"Is he always so pleasant?"

I let out a short bark of laughter. "Usually more so. I think he was behaving because you were in class. That little barb you delivered before I got thrown out probably helped with that. I think you stung his ego." 

She shrugs. "It needed to be stung." 

"Yes," I say. "Yes, it did."

"Is he the only teacher here that bullies kids like that? It's so unorthodox."

I raise an eyebrow at her. "As far as I'm aware, he is. And why do you refer to us as kids? You're the only girl I've ever met that does that." 

She flushes. "A slip of the tongue, I guess. I'm used to being around social workers, after all, and that's the only thing they ever refer to their charges as, no matter how old they are. You learn to get used to it and I guess it becomes sort of a habit once you've been called a kid so many time just to refer to everyone else as well as yourself as a kid, too."

Wow. That is the longest thing I have ever heard her say. I think her self-consciousness just reared its head because she went way too in-depth about a very simple question that didn't require a complex answer. Oh well. Just proves she's human. That self-consciousness is another thing that I find attractive about her, though, so it's causing me to lose my train of thought. I don't want to look like an idiot in front of this girl, whether I find her attractive or not. I mean, she is my foster sister so I need to come across as at least halfway intelligent. I mean, if I can't do that much, I'm not much good at being a brother, am I? I take a deep mental breath and steel myself. I can do this. I firm my resolve. I have to do this. My honor and pride as a brother is on the line now. "Oh," I say, then immediately beat myself up over it. Wow. I got myself that worked up over a one word response? There really must be something wrong with me. 

"I have a friend I think you'd like," Alicia says.

It's so out of the blue that I have to look at her twice before the words sink in. "What?" I say, the words coming out just as dumbly as the last ones.

"I have a friend," she says, deliberately making the words slow like she thinks I'm an idiot. Great. Just what I wanted. "I think you'd like him."

"Oh," I manage to say. "Who is this friend?"

She grins at me. "You're never going to believe me when I tell you."

Okay. Now my curiosity is officially peaking. "Try me," I say. I must remain cool. No matter what name comes out of her mouth, I must not answer her with the  _ no way _ response. It will be entirely too uncool and I will die of embarassment. 

"Timothy Dent." 

"No way." Fuck. I said it. I can't help it though. Timothy Dent is like my hero. And considering the stuff that I believe in and the things that underscore my day to day life, it's a perfectly understandable response. Timothy Dent is the world's leading expert on all things dragon. Of course, I say world's leading expert like more than one percent of the population knows anything about him. The group of people who know anything at all about dragons or even still believe that they did walk the earth and that the Wars did happen is so miniscule that I am almost one hundred percent certain that one percent is too high of a percentage to round up to for that group. But it makes me feel better, so I do it anyway.

But the thing that prompts the no way is less the name and more the fact that Alicia knows him. The guy is infamous for being a hermit. No one has ever even seen his face. His books never have the about the author photos that most of the books in the world have and no one knows where he lives, not even his publisher. All his fan mail gets sent directly to the publisher, who forwards it to two or three different p.o. boxes that they've been provided with and no one ever sees who picks up the mail. I don't know how he keeps his identity so secret, but he does. I don't think even a professional assassin could get to this guy, not with the way he lives his life like the most paranoid hermit in the entire universe (let alone on planet earth). 

"How do you know Timothy Dent?" I ask, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice.

"He's a close friend of mine," Alicia says. "Has been for a very long time. And," she says, her voice dropping to a whisper, "I know where he lives."

"You're kidding me," I say. 

"Nope. And his place is close by. In this town, in fact."

My eyes widen comically with disbelief. In this town? Timothy Dent lives in this town, this little repressed town with people who hate all things dragon? No way. Then I really think about it and I have to admit that it would make a perfect cover. No one would ever believe that a dragon expert would live in the middle of a town whose main hobby is to harrass the teenager who thwarts his teachers and all his 'betters' and elders every time they open their mouth to tell him off about his belief in dragon. In fact, when I give it a proper thought, this town is the only viable place for someone like Dent to hide out. After all, if this town is a proper marker for the rest of the world, anyone like me wouldn't be safe out there in the real world. Assassins would probably be a legitmate concern.

"How did you meet him?" I ask.

She looks at me, eyes smug, with her lips turned upwards in a half-smirk at the question. "That's confidental."

I roll my eyes, but I grin at her. "How close does he live?" 

"Oh. He lives right on the outskirts of town. I don't know how far that is from here, but I think I heard someone say that a bus goes near there." 

"Yes," I say. "There's a bus that runs to the welcome sign for the town."

"Well what are you waiting for? Let's go catch the bus." 

I hesitate. "I have to tell Mom that we're going."

"Oh right. Well, I don't think she's going to buy us going out to the edge of town together. So we're going to need some sort of cover story."

"Okay. She's going to hear about me playing hooky sometime today though. Actually, she's probably hearing it right now." I glance down the line of cars and sure enough, the principal is talking animatedly with my mother, gesturing emphatically in our direction. "On second thought, why don't we just catch the bus and leave the explaining for later."

"You're going to drag me into trouble with you?" Alicia asks, arching a delicate eyebrow at me. 

"Yes," I say, grinning unrepentantly. "You got a problem with that?"

"Not at all, Jason Phlanx. Lead the way to the bus stop." 

I grin and roll my eyes, my mood suddenly much more elevated than it has been at any other point in the day. I'm going to meet Timothy Dent. There's nothing that could make this day better. Okay. Well, that's not exactly true. Alicia being interested in me as much as I'm interested in her would make life absolutely prefect, but sometimes that old adage--that beggars can't be choosers--rings true. And this is so one of those times. I mean. Timothy Dent. I never expected to be able to meet the man and now I have the opportunity to see him in person dangling at my fingertips. Or walking behind me, if I want to really be accurate about it.

We get on the bus and I wonder momentarily if my mother even noticed that we walked away from her. I should probably care more about whether she noticed, since if she didn't she'll probably get all frantic and worried about us not being there. Well, she'll get frantic over Alicia. I have a feeling that she could really care less about me since all I do is ruin her perfectly sound reputation (apparently it was perfectly sound before I went crazy, as she is apt to remind me on a daily basis). I mean, I know I'm not really being fair to her but the woman is obsessed with appearances. Just like the majority of our society is obssessed.

I sigh and flip open my cell phone after I pull it out of my pocket. I may dislike her the majority of the time, but it still inevitably comes down to the fact that she is my mother. And I just don't have it in me to worry her like that. I dial her number and she answers on the first ring.

"Jason? Where the hell are you?"

"Mom, stop freaking out. Alicia wanted to see some more of the town and we're on a bus. I'm just going to give her a tour."

"Jason, the last person that needs to give that girl a tour of this town is you. There's no telling what kind of crazy thoughts that you're going to put into her head."

"Mom, I'm not interested in fighting with you about this. I just called to let you know where we were so you wouldn't freak out at the school whenever we didn't show up."

"Fine, Jason. I don't like it. You should have told me this morning that you had plans to do this. That would have saved me a lot of time and effort and I wouldn't have had to waste gas."

"Mom, you're being ridiculous. It's a ten minute drive at most from the house. What did you waste, like, point one five four eight percent of a gallon or something? I'm sure the budget will survive."

"Jason, you will speak with more respect when you address me or I'll get your father involved."

"Of course you will, Mom. You always run to him whenever you can't handle things yourself. And I would have told you this morning except we didn't decide we were going to go do this tour thing until about five minutes after school ended." 

"Speaking of school, what was this that the principal told me about you skipping school? You know I don't approve of slacking off."

"When have I ever made less than full A's in all my classes?"

"You don't make full A's. You fail every History class you take."

"Because they aren't real history classes. We've been over this a million times. And I left school because I got in another fight with Mr. Tyler and he decided he needed to give me ISS for it. So instead of sitting around bored and doing absolutely nothing productive with my time, I skipped and effectively gave myself an OSS. It's not even that big a deal. Like, if a teacher is going to give you ISS and expect you to sit around bored to death in an effort to be taught some sort of lesson, they need to go back to school themselves and see that boredom is not an effective means to get someone to go along with your ideas." 

"Jason, I really don't want to hear one of your little rants right now. What did you do during this little jaunt of yours off school property that was so productive?"

"I went to the local library and read some books. You know, the thing I would have been doing in school if the history teacher didn't think he was so all powerful that he had to prove himself godlike by handing be an ISS slip simply for disagreeing with him."

"I heard you called him a liar to his face, in front of all of his students." 

"I did. Because he is a liar. But I didn't call him a liar. I said that he was teaching lies. I never directly said to him 'you are a liar,' and if he said I did, he's just proving my point for me and really is a liar. So there."

"Again, Jason, I am not having this argument with you. Especially not over the phone. You said you were going to give Alicia a tour of the town, right?"

"Yes."  
"Be back for dinner."

I roll my eyes. "Mom, I don't know how long this is going to take and we just got on the bus. Dinner is in like two hours. We'll just grab something in town." 

"With what money?" Her tone is incredulous.

Crap. I hadn't thought about that. 

"I have some," Alica says, mouthing the words at me so that my mom can't hear her speaking. 

"Alicia is going to take care of that," I say into the mouthpiece.

"Jason, don't take advantage of your sister. She's been through enough already." 

"I'm not taking advantage of her, Mom. We'll see you later." I click the end button and hang the phone up before she can say anything else. The conversation was difficult enough as it was and I don't see any reason to keep talking about it. The only thing that's going to happen is us making each other miserable, which is already on tonight's itinerary for the dinner discussion conversational content anyway.

The bus rolls to a stop in front of the welcome sign to the town and we walk off. I stand to the side so that Alicia has enough room to get off the stairs and stretch, my muscles stiff for sitting still so long on the bus. This sign is the last stop on the bus route, so we had to sit through every other stop under the sun before we got anywhere near it. It took nearly an hour and a half just to get here--the same time it would have taken us if we had chosen to walk. Still, riding on a bus for an hour and a half is infinitely better than walking for the same length of time. Plus, I would rather be well rested than exhausted when I come face to face with my hero. Timothy Dent. I still can't believe that Alicia knows him or that he lives here in this town. But there's nothing about this girl's personality that indicates an ability to hide anything for long. She's so transparent it's actually kind of sad. 

Alicia raises an eyebrow at me. "Ready?" she asks. 

"Of course," I say. "Where exactly does this guy live again?"

She points. "Up there," she says. 

I follow her finger and pale instantly, my muscles seizing with fear. "T-there?" I repeat, stuttering the words. 

"Yes," she says. She frowns at me. "What's wrong?"

"He lives near the gas station?" I ask. Maybe I just saw things wrong. Maybe she was actually pointing to the opposite side of the street. I really don't want to go anywhere near that station, not even if my hero lives there. 

"No," she says.

I breathe a sigh of relief. Thank God. I really didn't want to go up there. But if he didn't live near the gas station, why had she pointed up the hill. "Then where--

"He lives  _ in _ the gas station. Come on." She starts walking.

I hurry after her. "Alicia, come on, stop kidding around. No one lives up there. That place is haunted." 

She halts and frowns at me. "Haunted?"

"Yes," I say, nodding fervently. Maybe if I nod my head hard enough I'll be able to convince her that the gas station is one place that we want to avoid at all costs. "It's very creepy."

Alicia sighs, flicking her hair out of her eyes in a way that belies impatience. "Jason, it's a gas station. It can't possibly be haunted." 

"It is. Seriously, let's just turn around and get back on the bus. The joke has gone far enough." 

"Has anyone ever told you that you're an idiot, Jason?" she asks.

The question dumbfounds me for a minute. They seem oddly familiar... I vaguely remember saying something similar to Morris earlier today. Maybe she's mimicking me...but no, Alicia was nowhere near that little exchange. "I'm not an idiot," I insist.

"Then why are you having problems walking up the hill to this gas station?" 

"Because it's haunted!"

"There's no such thing as ghosts!" She's an inch away from my face, her breath so hot against my skin that it's making it rather dififcult to think. 

"Ghosts?" I look at her incredulously. "Who ever said anything about ghosts?" 

"You said the place was haunted." 

I wave a hand dismissively. "Yes, but I didn't mean it was haunted by ghosts."

"Then what is it haunted by, exactly?" 

"I don't know," I say. "Something other." 

"Something other?" 

"Yeah." 

"Other than what?" 

I shrug, feeling extremely discomforted. "Other than human."

Alicia snorts and reaches a hand down towards my wrist and clasps it within her grasp. "Come on," she says and starts to pull me along.

I try to tug out of her grip but she is surprisingly strong for a girl. I am struggling fully by the time we get midway up the slope and I'm almost crying. This place terrifies me that much. The memory I have of that day, so long ago, floods my mind and it's the only thing I can think about. I don't want to go inside this station. I don't want to go anywhere near this station. "Let me go," I say, the words coming out through my tears. "Please, don't make me do this again." 

Alicia stops but doesn't take her hand from my wrist. "Again?" she says. "Jason, when was the last time you came up this hill?"

I draw into myself as much as I am able, what with her having a grip on me and all. "I was thirteen," I say. "I didn't come here on my own accord. Morris got his brother to bring me out here after him and his little buddies beat me up. I thought they were going to kill me."

"And?" Alicia asks, her voice gentle as she prompts me to continue.

"And Morris gave me an ultimatum. He told me to run to the wall of the gas station and touch it or to choose death either by his cronies' hands or by a hit-and-run orchestrated by his brother."

Alicia lets out a long swear word in a language I don't recognize. It's easy to tell it's a swear word though--curse words in any language all have that special little emphasis that lets people know they aren't spoken in polite society. "No wonder you're afraid," she says. She drops my wrist.

I pull my wrist to my chest, cradling it with my other arm. I glance backwards down the hill, wanting to do nothing more than I want to run away. But something is making me stay. Something about Alicia's casual acceptance of my story is piquing my curiosity.  "Why?" I ask. 

She frowns. "What happened when you touched the wall?" She evades my question nicely. 

I'm too relieved that we've stopped moving to care if she's evading my questions or not. It's the only thing keeping me from bolting in the opposite direction.  "Pain," I say. I shiver. "Pain the likes of which I'd never felt before and have never felt since." 

"Pain," she says. "What kind of pain?"

It's my turn to frown at her. What does she mean, what kind of pain? What kind of ridiculous question is that? "The kind that hurts," I answer.

She punches me lightly in the arm. "Smartass. Now be serious. What did the pain feel like? Describe it in detail for me, if you can." 

I sigh, giving her a look that shows her I think that she's absolutely insane for asking me to do this.

"Humor me," she says.

Fine. Whatever. It's not like it's going to hurt me to describe it. Hell, it may actually help. It may get us off of this godforsaken property. The gas station is about one hundred feet away from us and for now, it's staying put. Alicia isn't dragging me towards it any longer, so at least she's taking my fear seriously. I take a deep breath, trying to calm the rapid beating of my heart. Panicking like this when I'm not in danger of being touched by the pain wall or whatever the thing is around the gas station is so not good for my health.

I dig deep into the memories that I've been repressing for so long. I don't want to remember this. I don't want to feel that pain again, not even in a memory. Not even for a second. The intensity of it was so strong back then that it literally felt like I was dying. Like I was being sucked into hell and having each little piece of my soul set individually aflame. It was worse than torture. And here we are, with my new foster sister asking me to describe my worst nightmare, my worst memory. I don't even know what the purpose of the exercise is, just that she seems determined to get me to that gas station no matter what.

"Well?" she asks.

Jeez, doesn't anyone know how to be patient anymore. What the hell am I saying? Of course they don't. People in general are very impatient. It's like a rule or something. Do not wait for anything that you can get in five seconds. Of course, the reverse is also true: Wait for something that is metaphysical or related to religion is some way for as long as possible even though you have absolutely no proof whatsoever that any holy man is going to come down to earth and save a select handful of special chosen people. It's no wonder society is so fucked up; look at all the mixed messages we send ourselves.

But I'm getting sidetracked--I'm sidetracking myself by thinking about other things. I can't help it. I don't want to remember all the pain I went through when I was thirteen. I touched the pain wall around the gas station for maybe half a second back then and it's the worst memory I have. Now I have to remember it and Alicia is probably going to make me go up to the gas station again. Fuck. My life sucks. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
